Why are Rush tracks starting to disappear?

[naikon]

Rush is my favorite band, and I just noticed that Spotify started removing some tracks, starting with the longest.

Yesterday I noticed that "2112" was gone, and today some other long tracks like "Xanadu, Cygnus X-1" are gone. 

Now I see a pattern: every song that is over 10 minutes is gone.

WHY??? 

[blake]

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@naikon wrote:

Rush is my favorite band, and I just noticed that Spotify started removing some tracks, starting with the longest.

Yesterday I noticed that "2112" was gone, and today some other long tracks like "Xanadu, Cygnus X-1" are gone. 

Now I see a pattern: every song that is over 10 minutes is gone.

WHY??? 

---

This is likely region-specific and relates to copyright and royalty payment laws in your jurisdiction - here in the US, those tracks are available. Where are you located?

In 9 out of 10 cases, what's happened is that the label or copyright owner has removed the tracks from Spotify in order to fix metadata errors or to resolve copyright issues. Occasionally, there's a technical error, but that happens infrequently. My best advice for you is to wait a few days and see if the songs become available again, there's little else to do.

[Christoffer]

Hello and welcome to the community!

It's up to the record label to decide if they want to keep the songs on Spotify. You can read more about this at the music faq.

[Dave2112]

I have noticed the same thing, Spotify need to sort this quickly or let us know what's happening or I am off somewhere else.

[naikon]

Okay, the songs are still gone. Can we PLEASE have some information? Spotify just starts to remove tracks without even telling their listeners? Why have only the 10+minute songs been removed?

[geirhong]

Aargh. Looks like it's the UMG deal with 10 minute plus songs disappearing again. It was the same thing 2-3 years ago. It is probably a technical mistake this time as well, but expect them to be gone for months before they reappear. 

[jatsa]

Once againl Spotify rushes to provide its customers with an explanation...

This is hardly surprisng, as the company's lightning quick response to the "Why can't I delete radio stations" issue

is now legendary...

[geirhong]

Actually I'd rather have an explanation from UMG. Spotify cannot do anything about this.

[jatsa]

Yes of course. Silly me. Writing an explanation (even if it is to "blame" UMG) is way beneath Spotify.

They have, after all, much more imnportant things to do than worry about customer relations....

[AerthisDavhne]

I just reported a similar issue with some albums by Brad Mehldau and Liquid Tension Experiment - all songs over 10 minutes are not available. I got this answer:

"We'll now pass this case onto our content team to take a look at but bear with them as they'll need to contact the guys who send us our catalogue data so it might take a little while to sort out, especially as in this case the audio file itself is broken (normally it's just labelling errors they get)."

So I'd guess it's a technical issue when copying songs to the catalogue?

[cbw]

Yes -  its soooo annoying!!! 

[Joe]

As @geirhong said, this looks like a repeat of a similar problem with the UMG catalogue which happened 2 years ago. Al their music >10 minutes appears to be disappearing. The spotify content team are aware.

[LoTekK]

So I was revisiting Liquid Tension Experiment yesterday (first time on Spotify), and noticed this very same issue (tracks longer than 10 minutes being unavailable). Was the issue resolved and is now reocurring, or was it never resolved in the first place? Kinda frustrating! Oddly enough, though, other artistes do have >10minute tracks available to me (eg. Rush, GnR).

[AerthisDavhne]

This was never resolved. It's pretty annoying, and I think my comment above about some technical problem when copying from certain digital catalogs still applies. Not true for every single catalog, so things work well for some artists, not so for others.

[IngerG]

Something else odd just happened. Saturday we were enjoying Jacob's Ladder from Permanent Waves. 

Today we wanted to listen to it again. But now the track was replaced by a shoddy live version (without being marked as "Live")! 

What just happened? I understand from other replies that it's the label that decides what songs to keep on Spotify. Can Spotify ask them to please put the original song back? If I wanted the live version, I'd click on the Live album. I want the studio version! 

There is no point in having Spotify if I still have to go out and buy a CD to get the song that was on the original album. 

[user-removed]

@IngerG

Hey there!, What listening region are you in? I just did a quick region look up and the album from Rush, Premanent Waves is available in these listening regions:

http://kaaes.github.io/albums-availability/#3nUNxSh2szhmN7iifAKv5i

What device and Spotify app version is this happening on?

[IngerG]

I'm in Sweden. I use Macbook Pro. I just updated to latest version of
Spotify.

Now I checked my Android (which is what I used the other day) - that still
has the correct studio version!

But on my Mac it's the live version! This explains the change, but how can
this be?

[user-removed]

@IngerG

Hey here, can you provide a screen shot of what is showing on your Mac Spotify app, when trying to play the Rush content? I have maybe a few ideas but I am not sure what could be the issue exactly.

What Spotify app version are you currently using on your Mac?

Do you have any local music files added to your Spotify that are Rush related music? Might try toggling off any local music file source locations, log out of the Spotify app and back in and try to play the correct content again.

Have you maybe clicked on the shuffle feature on the Spotify app on the Mac, the two intertwined arrows crossing each other? Turn off any shuffle or repeat features on the player bar options if they are on, and now try to play the correct content again.

I know this sounds silly, have you tried logging in and out a few times, and then trying to play the correct content again you are wanting to play? Logging out of the Spotify app and back in refreshes content, and this helps to clear up some issues sometimes.

Also do you have the content inside a playlist and maybe have sorted the playlist a particular way? Like say the playlist is sorted by SONG, and maybe the playlist is playing the content by the custom sorting order, rather than playing the song clicked on you are wanting to play in the playlist? Might try by turning all sorting columns in the playlist with the Rush content in, there should be no green arrows showing on the sorting columns of the playlist by clicking on the column names until they go away.

Have you tried playing the album directly from the artist page - album page? This is to rule out any playlist issues where the music might be stored into.