Unreleased tracks are alive and well on Spotify

A loophole allows for live concerts and unreleased song bootlegs to hide in plain sight

Music streaming services typically enforce strict measures to prevent unauthorized uploads of copyrighted music. However, back in 2020, Variety brought a very big issue to our attention when they revealed a loophole being exploited giving way for Spotify to become just another hub for bootlegs of popular songs. Users were uploading music illegally by categorizing it as a podcast, bypassing the platform's rigorous music monitoring systems.

Podcasts, it turns out, are subject to less stringent scrutiny. As a result, a simple search for popular artists under the "Podcasts & Shows" tab on Spotify often reveals unauthorized live recordings and remixes. Obviously this can be great for us music consumers looking for this type of content, but the real problem is that these uploads do not generate any royalties for the rightful owners of the music.

In doing my own testing, I noticed that simply typing “blink-182 live” into the search bar gave me the band’s complete ONE MORE TIME Tour show from March 15, 2024.

Additionally, typing in “taylor swift live” brings up, you guessed it, live Taylor Swift gigs from her Eras Tour.

The original article notes that typing in keywords and terms like “chopped and screwed,” “slowed and reverbed,” “remix,” and “mashup” will also help a user track down bootlegged material.

But probably the most absurd thing from this article was what a Spotify rep told Variety at the time:

“We take intellectual property infringement extremely seriously. Spotify has multiple detection measures in place monitoring abuse on the service to detect, investigate and deal with such activity. We are continuing to invest heavily in refining those processes and improving methods of detection and removal, and reducing the impact of this unacceptable activity on legitimate creators, rights holders and our users.”

If intellectual property infringement is taken so “extremely seriously”, then why just less than four years later (currently 2024 at the time of publishing this post), is this still a problem?

Have you come across any bootlegs on Spotify or any other major streaming platforms? If so, sound off in the comments! I’d love to check them out.