I was searching for a song today when Spotify’s algorithm surfaced an artist who has made a career out of rerecording iconic songs — Hotel California, Bohemian Rhapsody, and dozens more — publishing them under their own name, collecting hundreds of thousands of streams, and giving zero credit to the original artists or rights holders in the credits. This isn’t a tribute artist. This isn’t a cover song with proper licensing. This is someone in Vietnam monetizing some of the most protected intellectual property in music history, and Spotify is paying them for it.
When I reported it, Spotify’s response was to ask me to fill out a form. There is no form. Their own reporting system has no clear path for a listener to flag this kind of systematic infringement across dozens of artists simultaneously.
Here’s why this matters beyond just being annoying: The moment a platform receives actual notice of copyright infringement, their DMCA safe harbor protection gets a lot harder to claim. I gave them notice in a documented agent chat. They acknowledged it and still pointed me to a broken process. Spotify is essentially rewarding bad actors while making it the listener’s job to police their platform. Most people would never take it this far — which is exactly what these bad actors are counting on. The real artists whose work is being stolen have no idea this is happening at scale. Spotify does now.
Here’s what Spotify should actually build: A reporting flow that identifies the song being infringed, automatically routes the notice to the label or publisher who holds the copyright, and confirms to the reporter that it was delivered. One button. Direct notice. No forms that don’t apply. No dead ends. The technology already exists — Spotify has rights holder data in their system right now. They use it to pay royalties. They could build this tomorrow if they wanted to.
Call to Action: If you’ve seen this on the platform, comment below. If this gets enough traction, I want to build something — a community tool, a browser extension, a public database — that makes it easy for listeners to identify infringing content and send direct notice to the rights holders themselves. The labels have legal teams and resources. They just don’t know this is happening because Spotify buried the reporting path. Let’s change that. Drop your examples below and let’s see how deep this rabbit hole goes.