The New Musical Order - Country Artist, Grant Langston Learns about Digital Theft the Hard Way

While Grant Langston fights for the rights to his music, we are pushing the release date of aLAbama to June 14th, 2024 in hopes he will be able to release the full album. Songs affected by this theft are; “Layaway”, “Country or Bust”, “Keep It Coming” and “Move Your Move”.

https://grantlangston.com/

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THE NEW MUSICAL ORDER
Country Artist, Grant Langston Learns about Digital Theft the Hard Way

LOS ANGELES, CA--May 10th was supposed to be a great day for LA-based Americana/Country Music artist Grant Langston. His new album aLAbama was due to hit the digital streaming services along with a big marketing push and a raft of shows and radio promotion. While uploading his new record to the digital distributor Tunecore, he learned that things weren't going to go planned.

"They responded to the new record upload and said, 'Some of these tunes have previously been uploaded.' I told them this wasn't true and explained that these were all new, original recordings." Langston explains.

Tunecore refused to upload the new tracks. When they shared the name of the artist that was using the tracks, Langston went to Spotify and clicked on the songs only to find that they were his new recordings posted under different titles.

"It's really my worst nightmare. Somehow someone had stolen my unreleased music and released it under a fake name, with fake titles, effectively blocking me from releasing the music."

In order to protect copyright owners, these services use a digital review when tracks are submitted. This computer scan "looks" at the different facets of the music file and determines if there is a duplicate in their system. If there is a duplicate, they reject the newcomer as being stolen. This time the writer, creator, and owner of the recordings have been beaten to the punch.

"How could it happen? That's the question you ask yourself. It puts you in the awkward position of going back to everyone who worked on the production of the music and asking them if they put the tracks in an unsecure location. It's unlikely, but you have to cover all bases," Langston says.

The much more likely path to the theft involves the large number of files and CD's that are sent to radio and press outlets all over the world in the months leading up to the release of the record. Each recepient has the ability to take the music, send it to a music theft ring for compensation and there's no way to be caught. Much of these operations occur outside the reach of US law enforcement.

There are also questions about the security of sites like Dropbox where many people store tracks during the production process.

As Langston sees it he can prove that he wrote, sings on, and created the tracks, but these large global corporations may not care.

"Now, I'm in the position of having to go to each streaming platform and prove that these recordings belong to me. If they are willing to invest the time to listen and consider my history and evidence, I will surely win. Will they do that? Do they care that I may lose the rights to music that I've worked for years to create? I don't know and everything about this record is in limbo until I find out."

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