How a musician accused of fraud got his music back on Spotify, iTunes

Enlarge / Musician Benn Jordan, who performs under the alias The Flashbulb, successfully defended his music against streaming fraud allegations.

Last Friday, musician Benn Jordan assumed his phone was glitching when he tried to pull up one of his albums and couldn't find it on Spotify. Then he noticed all the notifications he'd gotten from fans asking why he'd removed his music on all the streaming platforms where his music could typically be found, including Apple Music, iTunes, Deezer, and YouTube Music.

But Jordan had not made any such decision. By the time night fell on Friday, the gravity of what had happened finally sank in, and he realized something was "very, very wrong."

For the past 17 years, Jordan has paid his digital distributor, TuneCore, thousands of dollars to manage his music on streaming platforms. Under his alias The Flashbulb, Jordan had released more than a dozen albums, reaching 1.9 million listeners on Spotify who added his songs to more than 300,000 playlists last year alone. In total, he had earned over $400,000 in sales for TuneCore since signing up for its services in 2007.