When most people want to find a rework of their favorite songs, they usually turn to platforms like SoundCloud and YouTube. The fact that almost anyone can upload a track to these services has allowed songs like ‘Plastic Love’ and ‘Dead to Me’ to find entirely new audiences, thanks to dedicated fans who have taken the trouble to tweak these songs. You don’t think of a service like Spotify as a place for bootlegs, but for a short time, it was possible to find some of the most popular remixes made by fans on the service. Some astute people found an alternative solution that allowed them to upload their favorite remixes to the platform’s podcast section. Using terms like “chopped” and “screwed”, it was apparently easy to find these tracks.
However, that was before Variety published an article about the phenomenon, and Spotify started taking action against them. It is difficult to know how long these tracks have been on Spotify, but what is clear is that the company has cracked down on the practice. Since Variety published its article, Spotify removed all tracks mentioned in the piece, including ‘Dead to Me’. Furthermore, when we try to use the terms highlighted by Variety, it was not possible to find remixes in the podcast section. It is possible that some other combination of search terms will allow you to find tracks that Spotify missed, but now that the practice has been highlighted, you should imagine that Spotify is paying attention to people trying to divert the tracks from the content filters.