Music is a precious thing; and as much as we might hate to admit it, it’s also a business. Release schedules and album rollout plans are developed long in advance to create a story and business that benefits both the artist and the listener, so it’s terribly troublesome when those schedules are thrown into disarray. Even as much as we at Your EDM love to post song debuts from live shows, that may not be how the artist intended their music to first be heard.
Still, it’s another thing entirely to rip unreleased songs from live sets and upload them to Spotify under a different name. It’s something that Martin Garrix is apparently currently dealing with, and he’s furious. He posted to his Instagram story yesterday to vent, “This is the exact reason why I barely test out new material during shows/preview it on livestreams anymore. […] Sad way of people trying to get clicks+attention.”
This is different from something like the fake Skrillex song that was uploaded to YouTube last week using an already-released track by a different artist. That kind of fraud is actually quite common, with many claiming insane collaborations between top-tier artists that don’t actually exist. In Martin Garrix’s case, it’s far worse for his unreleased music to be uploaded under an entirely unrelated name.
The only way to truly prevent this is for artists to stop playing out unreleased music at shows, which is something none of us wants. We have to find a way to hold those responsible accountable, but until that time, the rest of us have to suffer.
Garrix isn’t too happy about some of his unreleased music getting uploaded to fake accounts
byu/homicidal_penguin inEDM
Photo via Rukes.com
Looks like a PR stunt.
people are stupid if they think they’ll get publicity by stealing other people’s material. I mean, hello? Originality is a thing, and it’s something everyone should have as an idea before doing anything. They should be more sensible abput releasing content.