Who said you can’t make money of nothing? Seinfeld was the first show to proclaim being about nothing, and it made tons of money, but these guys are also ‘stealing’ from the big bad guy by the same occasion, the big bad guy of music being Spotify of course.
About a month ago, a band from Ann Arbor Michigan, Vulfpeck posted a whole album called ‘Sleepify’ consisting of ten songs of absolute silence,… you could hear absolutely nothing during any of these tracks! And the funny thing is that every time someone was streaming a ‘song’, either ‘Z’, ‘Zz’, ‘Zzz’ or ‘Zzzz’,… even the first 30 seconds of it, they would get paid! Isn’t it genius? Vulfpeck was actually asking the fans to stream the album overnight, while they were sleeping, to produce enough money for the band to go on tour. According to Hypebot, they made $20,000 off ‘Sleepify’, and this is not bad at all considering the amount of time and effort they invested in the making of this complicated album.
Unfortunately, Spotify put its foot down, the little game ended on Friday, and Spotify asked them to remove the album because it was violating its terms of service. Vulfpeck responded to Spotify by posting 3 new tracks of spoken words,… on Spotify once again! I love how this band is using the streaming service as a way to communicate with its fans, that’s so funny and smart. In the first track, ‘#Hurt’, one of the band members explained the email he received from Spotify, while adding he is ‘scared’ and ‘a little bit chilly, hurt and confused’. ‘They have a legal team and Investment’, he says, ‘but I have Spotify and they don’t, so I am using my outlet!’
He is obviously afraid of a lawsuit. The second track, ‘#Reflect’, is 30 seconds of silence (again! They are really looking for that lawsuit!) whereas the third song ‘Parted Sea’ is a 30-second cheesy keyboard composition.
I wonder whether this will give similar ideas to other bands, why not inundate Spotify with silent tracks? They would eventually give up? But I have to say that Vulfpeck has real music, some funky old school R&B with a Stevie Wonder vibe, and it is not bad at all!
