Ted Gioia on some sort of scam-like activity going down on Spotify and other large web platforms:
Adam Faze kept hearing the same song on Spotify over and over again.
Such things aren’t unusual. Hit songs get played repeatedly—although this one seemed more annoying than most.
But in this case, something even more bizarre was happening.
When Adam looked to see the name of the song, it was always different. The titles were a wild assortment—almost as if a random word generator had been used to pick them:
- “Trumpet Bublefig”
- “The Proud Dewdrop Amulet”
- “Thorncutter”
- “Viper Beelzebub”
- “Whomping Clover”
- Etc. etc.
But the music was always the same.
Even stranger, the artist was also different in each instance. And if you clicked on the writer credits, those were all different too.
How could the same track be attributed to dozens of different musicians? How could the same song be written by dozens of different composers?
Adam started compiling a playlist, and adding each new iteration of this song when he found it. When he got to 49 versions, he shared the playlist on social media. “I’ve officially stumbled upon the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen”, he announced.
A Twitter user, alerted by this, quickly discovered another 10 iterations of the same song. This banal tune was everywhere. The use of multiple aliases made it difficult to gauge the full extent of the deception, but Spotify was pushing this track so aggressively that it was impossible to hide the charade they were playing.
When asked how it was possible to find so many examples, Adam replied: I’m completely serious when I say it was starting to be every other song after a while.”
The song itself is just 53 seconds. And you’re glad when it’s over, because this tune is a loser — almost a Frank-Ocean-at-Coachella level of bad. Even call centers have better taste in their on-hold music.
