Last week, Raleigh-based Jack The Radio were caught off-guard by an email they received, saying that their latest album “Under Lonely Light” would be removed from Spotify.
"We got an email from DistroKid saying that Spotify thinks there have been some suspicious plays on your account and they'll be deleting your latest release,” Jack the Radio frontman George Hage told WUNC. "They didn't give us any more details. They didn't even say which song was in question."
DistroKid is a digital music distribution service that helps artists, like Jack the Radio, get their music on streaming services. Spotify has a minority stake in the company. Hage later learned that the song in question was "Evergreens," one of the tracks from their latest album. He explained what happened in a reel he posted to the band’s Instagram page Thursday.
"I was surprised because that's not a song we've pushed as a single and it's one we've only played live one time to a crowd of about 20 people," Hage added.
Hage says the band had seen a spike in streams on “Evergreens,” but didn't think anything of it. They assumed the song got added to a playlist somewhere and people were streaming it based off of that.
"I've learned from talking to other bands, when Spotify sends you a message like that it's generally meant for people who are paying money to get added to playlists that will guarantee them thousands of streams,” Hage said. “They're like bot playlists. That's not something we've ever done."
Through the Spotify for Artists tool, Hage was able to see that "Evergreens" received 204 streams on May 25, 845 streams on May 26, and 15 streams on May 27, back to its normal range.
Because of this short spike, Spotify not only removed the song in question, but the entire album. This comes at a time when an AI-generated band called The Velvet Sundown has been receiving worldwide attention for racking up over a million streams and over a million monthly listeners on the platform in less than two months. It's also worth noting that as of last year, Spotify stopped paying royalties on songs with fewer than 1,000 streams. Hage noted that the numbers listed above would qualify "Evergreens" for a royalty payout.
"That's the biggest insult,” he said. “We're not a big band, and not only are we not going to get paid for the royalties for those streams, but since they removed the entire album I'm assuming we're not going to see any royalties for that either."
Spotify and DistroKid did not respond to WUNC’s emailed requests for comment by publication.
Hage says that in order for "Under Lonely Light" to be added back to Spotify, the band will have to pay DistroKid and Spotify again for the services they've already paid for.
After posting the Instagram reel, Hage learned that this type of thing is more common than he realized.
"There have been several bands we've heard from today that have also had their releases taken down,” he said. “A couple of them were in the same situation and had a back-and-forth with DistroKid and Spotify and they said it didn't go anywhere. They ended up just paying for the services again to get their music back up."
When asked the best way for fans to support the band, Hage said the best thing you can do is to buy physical media from the band directly. "That is far and away the best way to support a band," he said.
"Under Lonely Light" is still available to stream on Tidal, Apple Music, and other streaming services.
