Vol. 31 - Who Own's A Song's Second Life

The way an old song returns to public consciousness has changed dramatically over the past decade. It used to take having the song included in a popular movie or another artist recording a cover. Maybe the record label would include it on a new greatest-hits collection.

And while those practices certainly still exist, today sometimes all it takes is one person adding a song to a short video clip.

That video gets shared. Someone else uses the same sound. Thousands of people follow, and suddenly a recording from another decade is being heard by millions of listeners who may know nothing about where it came from.

For an artist, that kind of rediscovery should be a gift. After all, who wouldn’t want their song to be reintroduced to a new audience, right?

Well, sometimes it’s not quite so simple.

Liz Harris may not be a household name, but what happened to her is a perfect example of how complicated a song’s revival can become.

The Song She Didn’t Upload

Liz Harris records under the name Grouper. She’s spent much of her career outside the mainstream music industry, building a devoted audience around quiet, atmospheric recordings that rarely seem designed to chase radio play or chart success.

One of those recordings was “Poison Tree,” a song that appeared on a 2008 split release with the experimental artist Inca Ore.

More than a decade later, the song began spreading on TikTok. Younger listeners used it in videos that matched its hazy and melancholy mood. Harris wasn’t following the numbers closely and didn’t realize how far it had travelled.

Then Brian Foote, the general manager of her label, Kranky, told her that “Poison Tree” had reached approximately 20 million streams.

Harris was surprised.

She hadn’t put the song on streaming services.

According to Harris and Foote, someone else had fraudulently registered the recording, uploaded it and collected the money it generated. By the time they discovered what had happened, the unauthorized release had reportedly earned somewhere around six figures.

Fortunately, the person responsible had used the same distribution platform as Harris. That connection helped Harris and Foote shut down the fraudulent release and recover the money she was owed.

The legitimate version of “Poison Tree” has since grown far beyond those first 20 million plays. It has now reportedly been streamed more than 300 million times.

That’s an incredible second life for a song released in 2008.

It’s also a disturbing example of how an artist can lose control of a recording without even knowing that anything has happened.

When the Past Returns

Older music finding a new audience isn’t unusual anymore.

In 2020, a video of Nathan Apodaca skateboarding while drinking cranberry juice introduced Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” to another generation. The song returned to the Billboard Hot 100 after a 43-year absence.

Two years later, Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” became central to the fourth season of Stranger Things. The song had originally been released in 1985. In 2022, it reached number one in the UK for the first time.

Kate Bush described herself as overwhelmed by the affection the song was receiving. Something she had created nearly four decades earlier had suddenly found an emotional connection with millions of younger listeners.

I love that part of it. I’ve never believed a great song should belong only to the generation that happened to be there when it was released. If a short video sends someone back to a full song or album recorded decades earlier, I see that as a good thing.

That’s one of the most exciting things about the way music moves today. A song no longer has to remain attached to the generation that first heard it.

The difference in Harris’s case is that her song’s revival began without her knowledge, and someone else was positioned to benefit from it.

The listeners were real. The connection they felt to the song was real. The person collecting the money allegedly had nothing to do with creating it.

The Open Door

Digital distribution has removed many of the barriers that once prevented independent musicians from reaching an audience.

An artist no longer needs a major record company to place a song in stores around the world. A distributor can deliver that recording to multiple streaming services, sometimes within days.

That openness has created opportunities that previous generations of musicians never had.

It has also created gaps that can be exploited.

A streaming platform receives music, artwork, artist names and ownership information through distributors. When the information is incorrect, a recording can end up attached to the wrong artist. Sometimes it’s an honest metadata mistake involving two artists with the same name. Other times, someone is intentionally trying to place music where it doesn’t belong.

Spotify has acknowledged that this has been happening across streaming services for years. The company says the rise of easily produced AI music has made the problem even worse.

Earlier this year, Spotify began testing a feature called Artist Profile Protection. Participating artists can receive a notification when new music is submitted under their name. They can then review the release and remove themselves if they’ve been incorrectly identified.

It’s a welcome step, but the feature remains in limited beta.

It also raises a larger question: How did protecting an artist’s identity become the artist’s job?

Policing Your Own Catalogue

Harris says “Poison Tree” wasn’t the end of the problem.

She says she has since encountered fake remixes and new tracks posted under titles matching her songs. The goal appears to be capturing a small portion of the attention surrounding her work and turning it into streaming revenue.

She described the experience as playing whack-a-mole. One questionable upload disappears and another takes its place.

That requires an artist or someone working for them to continually monitor streaming platforms, check new releases, report violations and follow up with distributors.

For a major star with lawyers, managers and a label, that may be annoying but manageable.

For an independent musician, it can become another unpaid job.

I understand why streaming services and distributors want to make uploading music simple. That accessibility has allowed countless independent artists to release music without waiting for permission from a traditional gatekeeper.

But accessibility without proper verification creates a new burden. It rewards people who understand how to manipulate the system and leaves legitimate artists responsible for cleaning up after them.

If someone walked into a pressing plant with another musician’s master recording, claimed to own it and began selling copies, most of us would immediately understand the problem.

The digital version can feel less visible, but the principle is the same.

Someone created the music. Someone else claimed it. The system accepted the claim.

Real Listeners, False Ownership

It’s important to separate what happened to “Poison Tree” from the more familiar problem of artificial streaming.

Artificial streaming generally involves bots or automated accounts repeatedly playing music to generate royalties. In September, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry announced a new Streaming Integrity Initiative designed to fight that kind of manipulation.

Participating distributors have agreed to strengthen identity checks, verify ownership, screen content for infringement and share information about repeat offenders.

Those measures could also make it harder for someone to upload a recording they don’t own.

In Harris’s case, the popularity appears to have come from genuine listeners. The problem was the ownership information attached to the recording.

That distinction matters because there was something positive happening at the same time.

Young people were finding the song.

They were sharing it, connecting with it and becoming curious about the person who made it. Harris has spoken warmly about discovering that her friends’ teenage children were independently listening to Grouper.

The problem was the system between the audience and the artist.

Who Owns the Revival?

Once a song has been released, an artist can’t control every meaning that listeners attach to it.

A teenager might hear something in “Poison Tree” that Harris never intended when she recorded it. A filmmaker might place an old song inside a new story. A short video can connect a recording with an image, joke or emotion that changes how millions of people hear it.

That’s part of what makes music powerful. Songs continue forming relationships long after their creators finish making them.

Ownership should remain much simpler.

The audience can give a song another meaning. A new generation can give it another moment. Neither should require the artist to surrender the credit or income attached to the recording.

Streaming services have made almost every era of recorded music available at once. A song from 1966, 1986 or 2006 can sit beside something released this morning. For listeners, there’s very little difference between an old song and a new discovery.

That creates enormous possibilities for artists whose music may have been overlooked the first time around.

It also means every recording has become a potential asset waiting to be rediscovered. Where there’s attention, someone will eventually look for a way to redirect it.

Liz Harris was fortunate. She had someone who noticed the numbers, identified the problem and helped recover what she was owed.

How many artists don’t?

How many recordings are sitting online under incorrect ownership information while the person who created them has no idea they’re being played?

A song can find a second audience. It can take on a second meaning and experience a level of success that nobody imagined when it was recorded.

It shouldn’t need a second owner.

A song’s second life shouldn’t come at the expense of the people who gave it its first one.

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This Week’s Playlist

This week’s playlist follows the many ways songs can find new audiences long after their original release.

It includes music revived through movies, television, short videos and unexpected moments of cultural rediscovery, along with songs that prove a recording’s story doesn’t always end when it leaves the charts.

Listen to the DMM Vol. 31 playlist on Spotify