GULFF Cleverly Takes On Spotify

Have you tried listening to GULFF on Spotify? A press release says, “Do not pardon the interruption: There’s nothing unusual about hearing an ad while streaming music on Spotify, but in listening to GULFF’s debut single ‘error,’ the ad around the midpoint isn’t being served up by Spotify’s algorithm. The band wrote it and cut it into their textural new track themselves.”

Huh? The band continues, “If independent artists doesn’t release their music on Spotify, they may miss the opportunity to reach the platform’s 696 million users. The platform controls roughly a third of all music streaming worldwide and 37% of the U.S. streaming market. It profits upwards of $1 billion per year, but for the last two years, it has by policy demonetized any track with fewer than 1,000 streams per year, zeroing out royalties for the artists of over 175 million songs. While it pays many of its artists nothing and others next to nothing, it runs its own ads against their music on its free tier. GULFF’s deadpan ad in its song made both because of and against big tech is commentary on this deal with the devil.” Read more about GULFF vs. Spotify here, and get the official, non-Spotify versions of “error” and the follow up single “the rumo(u)r” on the air.