"A Mess That You Didn't Make" by Elena Goodrow

Bad things will happen throughout life and you can’t do much about it. My Dad told me this week that people are always going to throw you under the bus. You will have to spend time cleaning up someone else’s mess even though you don’t want to. It’s an unfortunate fact of life, but it’s true. It also applies to health issues and having CF. CF doesn’t care what you have going on. You’ll get sick at the worst times and your body will betray you when you were relying on it to pull through. We are all too familiar with dealing with stuff we don’t have time or energy to deal with. This week I spent a considerable chunk of time dealing with a challenge I did not expect.

I was informed by my music distribution service that Spotify was removing my album from the platform. Artificial streaming activity was detected on my music and that doesn’t only go against Spotify’s policy, but it’s also illegal. When I was informed of this I was so shocked and heartbroken. I immediately started doing research and contacting Spotify. I was not aware of artificial streams on my music and I had no involvement.

I read through many articles that listed the legal consequences of illegal streaming activity found on your music, and the list was extensive. I did research on how to prove I was not involved, and how I could get my album back. I lost everything that I had built since my album’s release in November of 2023. I lost over 6,000 of my own genuine streams, all the lyric analysis I did, the videos I made to go with each song, and the followers of my album on the platform.

Ultimately, Spotify gave permission for me to upload my album again. But I still had to start from scratch, so I have to go back and recreate everything I had made and accept that all of my hard-earned streams are gone.

My album is now officially back up and I would greatly appreciate if you helped me gain some of those streams back!

This whole experience was terrifying, stressful, and a complete shock. I had to scramble to figure out how to resolve the situation and it was not easy. Being an independent artist comes with many challenges. When you are managing yourself you have to figure out the legal jargon and make delicate decisions without a fancy consultant. Musicians are out there fighting for their music everyday. Like my Dad said, you’re going to have to clean up messes you didn’t make. But just like living with CF, if I fight hard enough I can thrive in my own ways.