The band wrote a completely silent album they called Sleepify and asked their friends to stream it while they slept. The group only has a fanbase of 1,000 or so, but soon all those plays started to add up.
At a rate of $.007 per stream, each fan generated about $4 while they slept. Before long the band was owed about $20k, which they intend to use to fund their next tour.
Spotify eventually caught on and removed the album, citing a violation of the platform's terms of service agreement, but you have to hand it to the band for thinking outside the box. On the other hand, why couldn't they just ask their fans to stream their real albums all night?
Here's their video that explains what they did.
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3 comments:
A thousand articles on this on the net and not a single author pointed out the actual part of the Spotify TOS that they breached.
If silence is art of John Cage, it's art for Vulfpeck.
Cleaver, yes, scam, grey area. Even if the recording contained ambient room sounds it could be seen as legit in court.
Still, pretty lazy of the author on the internet to not cover the 'why this broke the TOS', huh?
Cheers
What can I say? I haven't stopped smiling since I saw this. It's...Darwinian.
Been following the 'peck for awhile.. they are really great, funky musicians. That bass player Joe Dart is a shining talent.
My friends and I are wondering if they will see the 20K owed or if Spotify won't pay them at all. We all guess Spotify won't pay a cent for the sleepify album.
I for one, played Sleepify on repeat one night, and since I don't use premium, I'd hear an ad every 2-4 songs. Maybe better is the "turn off your speakers and stream this album with actual audible content?" marketing approach?
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