How Google Play Music screws indie bands and what to do about it?

Music

Lorn is an one man electronic band out of Milwaukee Wisconsin. My favorite album of theirs, The Maze To Nowhere, suddenly vanished from Google Play Music. All of their other work was still there so I wrote to them, here is the reply:

"This is now the third time in a year that the Google Play store has removed Lorn’s music without just cause.

The Maze to Nowhere was removed in June and reinstated shortly after. Vessel was removed in January and reinstated shortly after. Apparently The Maze to Nowhere has been removed again."

Their publisher wrote:

"the store uses a broken algorithm and inept employees to remove albums. If an independent artist gets too many plays it is considered “suspicious”, flagged by their system and then pulled down by an employee. It’s a completely random, arbitrary and losing battle to go back and forth with them only for it to happen again, again and again."

So I tried my luck with Google Play's support and got a hapless employee to try to escalate it. Here is the reply I got:

"I've just heard back from my specialist team and they have informed that the availability of a content on Google Play Music depends on the sole discretion of the content provider and we at Google have no say on it.

I understand that this is not the answer you were looking for, but, please try an understand my limitations here."

I wonder where I can escalate this?

Posted Mar 12, 2018, 9:34 PM UTC

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