There’s a seemingly endless amount of music and other audio available to be streamed on Spotify. Its landscape is so vast, that it is hardly possible to go through every publication application one-by-one. And thus, they set up some form of automation for it.
Now, imagine you’re in a band. The band’s doing alright for itself, making funky jams and songs, but it’s tough to get out there and play your tunes to the people who want to hear them. Oftentimes, the (literal) costs outweigh the benefits, and it takes a lot of time to arrange everything. When it’s all calculated and ready to go, your jaw will drop from seeing the number you’ve just seen pop up. Surely, there have to be other ways to get this tour off the ground without selling your excess kidney?
Your band has been making some decent money off of royalties from Spotify, but it’s nowhere near enough to get this tour rolling. You’d have to pay a total of $20,000 to get around cities, setting up shop, and to play the gigs. The amount varies, but per stream, you’d receive a whopping $0.005, so you’d have to get at least 4 million streams on your music in total. And, what’s more, a stream only counts if the song was played for at least 30 seconds by a unique device.
And thus, Vulfpeck co-founder Jack Stratton had a stroke of brilliance. In March 2014, the band presented Sleepify (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepify). On it were 10 songs, but they were all silent. Their runtime varied between 31 and 32 seconds, making sure that each song would count as a stream (which, if you were wondering, is why most interludes or skits on popular albums on Spotify have a much smaller streaming amount than their full-length counterparts!), and their titles were ‘Z’ (track 1) to ‘Zzzzzzzzzz’ (track 10). They asked their fans to go and listen to the album whilst they were asleep and promised free tickets for a tour in return. They didn’t have the biggest fanbase in the world, but it was a dedicated one, and they complied. At the time, they had about 1,600 Twitter followers, and their most popular song – “Wait For The Moment” – had gathered just over 72,000 streams.
Spotify saw what the band was up to, but decided not to act on it at first. Spokesman Graham James called it “a clever stunt,” and Vulfpeck’s Jack Stratton said that “their first contact with us was very friendly, offering any assistance with the publication process and all.” He was surprised to find the album being taken down seven weeks later, though. A violation of Spotify’s terms of service is what they were deemed guilty of, but Spotify never clarified which term they had violated. It seemed as if Spotify had underestimated the sheer force of dedication and what the promise of free tickets can do to people.
In the end, the Sleepify stunt paid for their tour – called the Sleepify tour, of course – and nearly 5.4 million streams were registered for the album before it was finally taken down. They toured across America, playing at venues in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and in their Los Angeles home base, with every ticket already being paid for in advance by their fans in the form of streams. Spotify paid every penny – as agreed in their publication agreement – of the royalties, which were just over $20,000, meaning the band technically toured for free. The band later made its way into bigger venues and was the first band to sell out New York’s Madison Square Garden without a manager or backing label in September 2019, marking their independent spirit and willingness to carve their own path toward success.
Take that, Spotify!
