Remember Vulfpeck, the LA indie funk band that scammed Spotify by uploading an album of complete silence to the streaming service last March in an effort to raise royalties to fund a tour?
Well the group’s unconventional approach to crowdfunding totally worked and not only that, they successfully received a payout from Spotify in the tens of thousands.
Though Spotify eventually pulled down Vulfpeck’s 10-track album of silence (with songs cheekily named ‘Z’ through to ‘Zzzzzzzzzz’) back in April, it still managed to rack up around 5.5 million total plays before it was taken down, according to a new royalty statement issued by frontman Jack Stratton (via Digital Music News)
The royalties statement shows that payouts varied from US$ 0.0030 to US$ 0.0038 per play for the short, inaudible tracks on Sleepify. Earning Vulfpeck a grand total Spotify payout of US$ 19,655.56.
(Source: Digital Music News)
Spotify originally didn’t seem too concerned with Sleepify, even applauding the band in the press for their “clever stunt” and offering to help with publicity, but once their prank picked up steam – the Swedish-based company “panicked when they realized someone was actually making money from the music,” as Stratton told VICE.
They first served the band with an email stating Sleepify had violated Spotify’s terms-of-use before eventually removing the album themselves when Vulfpeck failed to comply.
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Stratton responded to the takedown by uploading a three-track EP to Spotify titled Official Statement, containing a spoken word piece about the removal request (‘#Hurt’), 30 seconds of silence (‘#Reflect’), and a keyboard ditty (‘Parted Sea (Strong Pesach)’).
Stratton had his doubts that Spotify would honour the royalties following the backlash, but the streaming service eventually came through with a pair of monthly cheques for Vulfpeck.
The nearly $20k mark is entirely thanks to listeners getting on board with Vulfpeck’s scheme of listening to the music-less record on repeat while sleeping, racking up streaming royalties for the band while they slumber, generating around $4 in an average eight hours’ rest – as frontman Jack Stratton first detailed in a video back in March.
“I’m proposing that if you stream Sleepify, on repeat when you sleep every night, we will be able to tour without charging admission,” said Stratton in the video. “Also, we’re going to base the routing of the Sleepify tour on where Sleepify is happening the most. Never in the history of music has it been so easy to support a band’s tour.”
Vulfpeck are proceeding with their plans to book the US tour, which according to Stratton will include dates in LA, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and his former hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, hopefully this September.
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“I don’t see it as a misuse at all,” Stratton told Billboard of the Sleepify concept last May. “I see it as an art piece — or something.” He’s also happy to take Spotify’s money considering the attention on what is widely regarded by the musical fraternity as a broken business model with middling to poor royalty rates. “They’ve set up this economy where they get 30 percent and [content owners] get 70 percent, and surprise, the payout is very low,” adds Stratton.
Spotify’s takedown may have also been due to the worry that other, bigger bands may pick up on a concept similar to Sleepify – after all, it’s fair game.
Vulfpeck has a modest fanbase – around 1,670 twitter followers and nearly 7,000 Facebook fans – but what if a band with an online fandom in the millions pulled the same stunt? Sending Spotify bankrupt for a royalties paycheque of millions of dollars would only be the beginning of that hypothetical shitstorm.
