It's easy to "report" a song for violating copyright law on Spotify. It's also easy to abuse this system to derail acts with viral momentum, according to managers.
At the end of 2019, the producer Full Tac was excited to learn that his jocular single “Where’s My Juul??” with Lil Mariko was going viral. But his joy proved short-lived: Another artist who had recorded a track titled “Bitch, Where’s My Juul?” accused Full Tac of musical theft and issued a copyright infringement claim on YouTube — something that’s easy to do by just filling out a form online.
“He was frustrated because he thought we had jacked his song,” Full Tac recalls. “I went and checked out his song on YouTube. The three words, ‘Where’s My Juul,’ were the single commonality between the two songs.” Nonetheless, platforms honor infringement claims to limit their own liability, so Full Tac and Lil Mariko’s track was pulled down, despite the fact that the request wasn’t grounded in truth.
“Does that derail your momentum in a moment like that when your song is a viral sensation?” Full Tac asks. “Absolutely.”
This tactic of using the takedown feature against a competitor or rival is more common on platforms like Instagram or TikTok. Both have a “report” function that is supposed to be used only for content that violates the platforms’ guidelines. But prominent influencers sometimes come under attack from rival fan-bases or bots who “report” their page en masse in order to get it pulled down.
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