Regarding cover songs

[CelestialAeon]

Sometimes I run into artists that effectively gain visibility by publishing cover music with original artist "referred" so that the cover album is also visible through the original artists portfolio. For example:

https://open.spotify.com/album/0UnbMm1SzcGhzu6tPrXIhP

I was wondering if this is actually legal and according to Spotify EULA? Because this gives quite massive "free publicity" to totally irrelevant artists that just ride for example in this case on Ramin Djawadi's visibility.

If it is legal then I guess there is no point in publishing cover tunes without doing this, but it feels in many ways wrong, hence the question.

[AnyGaming]

Citing from Spotify's Metadata style guide for licensing partners:

"Product or track titles for cover songs must not make reference to the original artist.
Do not use phrases such as “Made Famous By”, “Originally Performed By,” “In the
Style of,” “Tribute to,” or “Cover of” in the track title or version field."

and

"Cover products must not use deceptive or misleading artist names, product titles or
versions, or track titles or versions that may confuse users."

So no, you can't do that. 

Further the document mentions that the consequence of this may be that the label may receive a strike or ban from Spotify. 

[CelestialAeon]

Thought as much - it raises just the question that why this album is still online as it seems to clearly break the rules

[AnyGaming]

Generally everything distributors send to Spotify goes live without manual review on Spotify's end. If distributors don't properly enforce the guidelines things like this can happen. Spotify hardly ever notices unless it's brought to their attention. 

[andreas_ae]

I noticied your discussion and got curious. Therefore I tried to report this issue using the report function. In MacOS app software the report function is only available for the artist NOT albums or tracks. And then there is no option for pointing out errors in the style of the metadata. - see attached.

Maybe because this malpractise is actually beneficial to listeners who want to quickly search for and identify theme songs? Which is the exact practice that this user is optimising for by providing metadata that might align his/her versions of theme songs with the originals?

[andreas_ae]

ollowing up on a comment I made at the end of thread, I just wanted to point out that OPs versioning or cover of the GOT main theme came up top of list when I searched for Ramin Djawadi's most famous track on Spotify ; ) something something rocks and vitreous housing.

[CelestialAeon]

Well it's good to hear that visibility is possible even without doing anything fishy / breaking the rules!