Reply All - #183 The Venova King

Episode Date: March 10, 2022

This week, a Super Tech Support: a listener’s Spotify Wrapped is dominated by a mysterious artist she's never heard of and swears she's never listened to. And the songs she supposedly played are even weirder. Emmanuel investigates. ------ Additional material: Peter Slattery's series on spotify scammers: https://onezero.medium.com/cheaters-guide-to-spotify/home Check out Drumkoon's music, including a new genre of music he calls "Venova Fusion" on bandcamp: https://drumkoon.bandcamp.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode is brought to you by that one unreasonably warm day in the dead of winter that comes just at the right moment. You know, the kind of day where you put on your favourite t-shirt, you inflate your bike tires for the first time in months, you go outside, you come alive, you're uplifted by the sights and sounds of your city, there's not a cloud in the sky, you feel the warmth of the sun on your skin again. And it doesn't matter that it's going to snow tomorrow. Because even as the sun sets, you believe, because we need to believe, that spring is just around the corner. Anyway, here are the real ads Hey folks, just wanted to say before we kick things off that today's episode has a racial epithet in it that might be uncomfortable for some people to hear.

So with that, let's start the show. From Gimlet, this is Reply All. I'm Emmanuel Jochi. And I'm Alex. Hey, Alex, how are you doing? Not bad. You know, I'm moving some stuff, so I just drove a U-Haul for many hours on the highway.

I like driving in a U-Haul. I feel like I'm the king of the road. Feels very mad max to me. It is kind of nice. It is, there's joy in just being that big on the road. Yeah, totally. Totally.

But anyways, I'm here with a time of story we haven't done for a while, which is, I have a super tech support for you. Ah, my bread and butter. I'm so glad that there's a super tech support

that I'm not reporting and I get to learn about. So, you know how people write to us about all kinds of things? Yes. But I feel like one of the things that people write to us about a lot, at least in the entire time I've been at the show, is just like the plethora of problems people have with their Spotify accounts. Yeah, that's definitely a thing.

Even more so, I think now that we are owned by Spotify. And I feel like we get emails a lot about people saying like, oh, bots have taken over my playlist or there are people hacking into my account and playing weird songs. Totally. And like, I feel like when you look at all that stuff, it's just kind of obvious, oh, there were tons of people trying to game Spotify and trick other people on to listen to their music. Yeah, exactly. And it makes sense to me why people would reach out because they're just like, right, you guys work at Spotify. Surely you know what's going on. But like we don't. Like, we work with this large tech company. And I got to say, I have no idea how this app works. But I was reading some of these emails. And I was just like, the more I read the emails about this stuff, the more I wanted to know more about this world of people. trying to game Spotify. So I wish out to someone who spent a lot of time looking into this, this one writer. Morning Peter, it's nice to meet you, dude. How's it going, Emmanuel?

It's going well, it's going well. His name's Peter Slattery. I'm a editor-writer based in Brooklyn. Just the most cliched thing ever. What are you going to do? You write specifically about Spotify and what I'm going to call Spotify spammers, which are people who do everything they can, including gaming the system, Just in order to get as many people to listen to their music as possible.

Was there one incident in particular that sort of make you have questions? Yeah. I had seen the movie The Joker as a favor to a friend. I didn't want to see it. I saw it. It was bad. It was really bad. But it has this one song in the trailer that I really liked.

And what was the song? It's Jimmy Durante's Smile. It's from like the 60s. To me, it's a banger. Okay. And so I went on Spotify and searched Joker soundtrack and clicked the first thing that showed up and was listening to it. Basically, I let it go, this playlist,

and then EDM stuff started playing. I'm like, wait a minute, that's not... That wasn't in the Joker movie. Right. And so I look, and I'm like, wait a minute, the playlist creator is not official at all. It's some random guy called Nalek. And I go to his profile and he's made hundreds of playlists that are very similar.

Call of Duty, official soundtrack, Frozen 2, official soundtrack. And it like turns out, of course, that the person who made the playlist is a guy who runs an EDM label. And he's just using this playlist to try and promote his music. Oh. Kind of brilliant. Yeah. And this whole Joker event, it got him super interested in how these spammers worked. And like, the more he started looking into them, the more he just started to see all of these like people who were just infiltrating all these different parts of the Spotify ecosystem. Like one area he told me about where you see a lot of these folks operating is Spotify's release radar, which is a playlist Spotify mix for you that shows you recently released music from artists who isn't too a lot. And you notice people were gaming this playlist by uploading songs and claiming a bigger artist,

like say Jay-Z was on their song. Jay-Z's not on the song. You're not allowed to do that. Spotify's rules say you can't do that. People get away with it because Spotify's system is opt-out. So I say Jay-Z's on a song. Jay-Z's team has to say, no, we're not. And if they don't press that button fast enough, boom, I have a song that Spotify's robots think

Jay-Z's on. So Peter said Jay-Z is actually a bad example. He's probably, honestly, too big for some. something like this to happen to him, but things like this are happening all the time to more up-and-coming artists. And Peter told me about another kind of spamming that has turned the white noise genre into absolute mayhem, where people just, like, upload fan noise in a frenzy every day just so they can be the latest new fan noise on the app and get streams. Some of them are uploading the same thing literally hundreds of times.

It's the same audio, but they're just naming it differently. same name it's the same name it's exactly the same so every day but white noise is showing up as new in Spotify even though it's just the same fan noises yesterday and uh you know i i asked Spotify about this and the other strategies peter told me about and they were just kind of like yeah we're aware of it stuff like this is against our rules it's an industry wide issue and even though we try to stop this kind of stuff uh when we see it like there'll always be people trying to do it um but i don't know, I was talking to Peter and I was just like, huh, okay, this world of spammers is like a fertile world full of like really, really, really cunning, like ingenious people and strategies, you know?

Mm-hmm. Around the same time, we got an email about like a Spotify spamming strategy, but like I just did not understand and it's really confused me honestly since I first heard about it. So, I don't know, we got an email from a listener about a weird thing that was going on with their Spotify rap. You know, like that. That wonderful marketing campaign our company does where they basically take all of our data

and say, here, it's actually fun that we're spying on you so much. Wow, when you put it that way. Yes, I'm familiar. I mean, that is kind of what's happening. I mean, okay, if you're not a Spotify user, how Spotify rap basically works is they will do this whole presentation at the end of the year where they show you which songs you listen to

and the artist you listen to most, and like how many minutes you consumed on the platform, what genres you liked, and, you know, all that kind of stuff. Truly the bane of my existence, Spotify, wrapped. I don't know if I've actually ever seen yours. Yeah, you know why you've never seen mine? Because while everyone's out here,

chasing clout with their cool music taste, I'm looking at mine right now. Top songs, let it go from the Frozen soundtrack. In summer, from the Frozen soundtrack. Two songs I like, for the first time in forever, from the Frozen soundtrack. Now let's look at my top artists. Hold on just a second.

It's really going to shock. you. Top artists. Kristen Bell and Edina Menzel from the Frozen soundtrack. Kristen Bell, Agatha Lee Mon and Katie Lopez from the Frozen soundtrack. Kristen Bell and Santino Fontana from the Frozen soundtrack. And then, strangely, an episode of Here's the Thing with Alec Baldwin? With Kristen Bell? From Frozen? How? Anyways. So that listener who wrote into us, her name is Katie. She's in Detroit. it. And at the end of last year, all her friends started posting best Spotify wrapped in social media,

you know, like you do. And all my friends are like, oh, if you don't post your Spotify wrapped, like, you're embarrassed. And I was like, I haven't even looked at mine yet. Like, what does your Spotify rap normally look like? I'm just like not like a huge music listener by any means or like super, super into it. So like all the big names that you think of, Justin Bieber is on mine and Kanye and Frank Ocean. When do you, you, when do you like listen to music normally? Like when I, like in the shower, I'll listen to music or like when I'm going in the car and like think about it, I know people like can't even leave the house without their AirPods in.

And like I would just walk somewhere and not be listening to music. Whoa. You're one of those people actually who can, he's okay with hearing your inner thoughts when you leave the house. Yeah, I guess. That is not me. I can put it like that. And so she was looking for her Spotify rap and she sees her top artists.

And, you know, she has that number five, Olivia. Rodrigo. Okay. At number four, she has Drake. Tracks. At number three, she has Frank Ocean. Her number one, of course, is Justin Bieber. But you notice, I skipped number two?

I sure did, and I'm dying to know what it is. Well, okay, so she looks at number two, and it's something she doesn't recognize. It says number two is called drum coon. Drumcoon? Number two. Yes. Number two, my top two artists of the whole year is someone I've never. Never heard of.

Number two, above Drake, above Frank Ocean, which is already a ludicrous thing to say. Is an artist called Drum Coon? Yep. So it goes Justin Bieber and then Drum Coon. I'm sorry, huh? Drum Coon? Drum Coon. Like, G-R-U-M-K-U-N?

D-R-U-M-K-O-O-N. What the fuck? Like, Coon, like, as in like, the racial epiphy. Yes. Yes. Yes. with a K Jesus

and you know she was just kind of like who is this person so she clicked on him I do have to ask is this person black yes okay that makes it kind of better

I was like yeah drum coon is like a weird it's a weird name yeah it is um okay okay and so I just kind of was looking into it and then I was playing some of his music

right and it sounds like this this is one of my top songs also. Like, listen to that Alex, like it's kind of vibey, right? Almost synthy. I don't even really know what the instrument is. I mean, it doesn't even sound like a synthesizer.

It sounds like, I mean, it just sounds like wind chimes, kind of. Yeah. And, you know, Katie, understandably is sort of like what's going on. So she goes to look at the list of her, like, her top songs. Like, it's like too much Justin Bieber, white Ferrari. Levitating, Duoliba. And then the next one is by Drumcoon that says, Hey Alexa, play ambient music.

That's the title of the song. Is this a person who, like, is trying to get their song to play whenever someone says, Hey, Alexa, play ambient music? Yeah, I mean, I think so. It's kind of a brilliant gambit, honestly. Right. I mean, okay. I mean, I guess I have to ask the question, does she have a smart speaker?

So this is what I found particularly tickling. She does, right? But she doesn't actually own an Alexa. Oh. She owns a Google Home. So that's weirder because you wouldn't ask your Google Home to be an Alexa and play your ambient music. Right. I don't know.

It's, I, yeah, I don't. I haven't, it blows my mind. I've no, it's, yeah, interesting. Honestly, this whole thing was just really bizarre to me. I wanted to know more about this guy at Drumcoon I was what he was up to. So the first thing I did was I sat down with Sonia, our colleague and producer. All right, let me pull up Drumcoon and opened up Drumcoon's Spotify page. Can you hear that?

Yes. And, you know, right away we saw that Drumcoon, he hadn't just made like a couple songs designed to trick smart speakers. Whoa, so wait, there's actually a lot of different types of like... There's a bunch of them. Yeah. There were fake songs for basically every... imaginable scenario or mood.

There was Alexa play Family Time music. Hey Alexa play morning music. Hey Alexa. Wait, wait, wait. Are you hearing this morning music? It's just water. It's just water sounds along the other side.

And not only that, it seemed like maybe Spotify or even Google had caught onto his smart speaker shenanigans at some point because there was an album. And look, the title is they tried to ban this. That's weird.

That's very weird. That was just like full of the He's like, hey Google songs, only with Google spelled G-U-G-L-E, I guess, to like avoid detection. Brilliant. I am so proud of him. But as I kept scrolling, I realized there was more to Drum Coon than just like the Hey, like, the Hey, Lex, Hey, Google songs. Like, he's actually like a super prolific artist. Like, last year, Alex, in 2021 alone, he recorded 10 different albums.

Dang. And in addition to that, he released, like, 40 additional, like, EPs and singles. He's just constantly making stuff And the sort of music he makes Is all kind of like that ambient Kind of sympathy-ish sound That like I played for you already, right? Like there are all these albums filled with music

From a sort of fancy steel drummy players Called a handpad There's a bunch of music on an instrument called A Bonova Which is a kind of cool instrument That sounds a lot like a saxophone And there's like some spoken word stuff It's like kind of

Yeah, it's this. eclectic mix of things. And on Drumkin's Spotify page, he had this artist statement. My music is liberated eternally from the world's market forces because they cannot fathom or perceive its true or real eternal value.

At the bottom, signed 10th of September 2021. And we have an email. So I wrote to him. Okay, so I wrote Drumcoon to be like, hey, will you talk to me? Mm-hmm.

And he wrote back. And the email is wild. When I got Drumcoon's email, I jumped on a call with the rest of the team on his story. Fia, Sanya, and Damiano. Most people I get, I write too much for an interview. Don't write back, say, thank you for your email. Before I say yes or no, I would ask three things of you. One, you have to watch my documentaries on YouTube.

Benny List links to three documentaries to watch all my music videos on Drum Coon Vivo and the playlist is 101 videos long Just to say, Alex, I missed a couple of videos. Then that there are 108.

Then Drumcoon goes on to say when you have done the above by immersing yourself into this Vanova fusion journey, then write me again detailing your experience going down with the Nova Fusion rabbit hole. The reason I'm doing this is because my music is a completely new music genre and style. So it's important music history and it has to be told very well.

Are you the one I will give my first podcast interview to? I like it. That is the boldest move though. Like send me back a personal essay after you do this. Yeah, I'm going to do it. Like that's what's pathetic about it. But just a half hour after I got off that call, before I'd even had a chance to start my homework, I got a text from a Danish phone number

and it was Drumcoon He wanted to talk That's after the break Welcome back to this show So Alex Drumcoon, the mysterious artist Who had shown up somehow in Katie's Spotify app He'd reach out to me and said

He'd talk Amazing So he's based in Denmark He told me But he was like Oh I'll be happy to do any time about work for you So we hopped on a call I'm going to first of all read my statement.

All right, go ahead. This is official now. So I'm not liable to any person or entity with respect to subject matter contained hearing because of the possibility of human and mechanical error, as well as other factors. My statements are made without warranty of any kind for commentary, scholarship, research, and freedom of speech purposes. Tendai Frank Tagarita is my real name, aka. A, Drumcoon, my musician name, hashtag Van Over King. The date 21 January, 2022.

I don't know that I've ever had somebody actually, like, read the, like a, what do you call it? A disclaimer. Totally. So, that's Drumcoon. And as he just said, his real name is Tendai. And when he insisted on starting an interview this way, I was not always sure what I was going to be in for the rest of the interview.

I think I was just like, okay, this dude's come ready to play. but actually once the statement was out of the way I feel like I got to see who tendi actually is a little more he's this super jovial guy and just so you can picture him he's medium height he has like this big beard and some extremely healthy looking dreads that I'm kind of jealous of he was sitting in the middle of what appeared to be some sort of man cave

I'm just surrounded by all of these different instruments I asked him to give me a tour of the place man I've got so many microphones you know I've got a whole bunch of gear I mean amplifiers I've got

you know smart speakers you know I've got a whole I've got congas man I've got like when I say it's a mess I've got congas

you know I've got so many drums I had to donate about was it 10 or 15 to my kids kindergarten just a clear room yeah when I

somebody tells me they have a birthday I can just grab an instrument and give it to them because I have so many. Tenda and I kind of shot the shit like this for a while. He told me he's actually a published author. It turns out he's a big critic of the government in his native Zimbabwe, so much so that Denmark actually garnered him political asylum and he's been living in Denmark for over a decade. Wow. Yeah, which is, I don't know. I don't know what I was expecting, but I was not expecting that.

Like, you know, this is a guy who is known by international organizations as an outspoken activist, and it just didn't really add up to me. I was just like, how does the guy with his back? background end up becoming a Spotify spammer of all things. So I just got to the business at hand. So I want to just up front kind of talk about why I'm reaching out and how I kind of found you. So we have a segment on the show. So I told him about Katie Spotify.

So she's like, wait, who is Drumcoon? I've never listened to this person. And when she looked closely, the songs that it said that she played a bunch were like had titles like Alexa play this or Google play this. and she was like completely nonplussed as to how they could have possibly been on her Spotify rap Uh-huh.

Tendai just sort of paused for a moment as if he was like thinking really carefully about what he was going to say next. And then he launched into the story of how he'd become Drumcoon, the artist and the spammer. He told me it had all started back in 2018. He'd recently moved out into the middle of nowhere

in the Danish countryside. which was even whiter than the city he'd been in before. It's one thing to move to a country like Denmark that doesn't have a ton of black people, but rural life was especially isolating. Oh, here's the thing, man. My friend is my lady, you know, and... Yeah.

Of course, I talk to my neighbours and stuff like that. They're not that many African people out there. It's really like out there, out there, you know? I didn't really make friends in that way. And it was around them that he decided to learn how to play the drums. He started with the bongos and then moved on to a bunch of other sort of instruments, like congas and stuff, which for him was massive because he spent his whole life thinking that he just wasn't good enough to be a musician of any kind.

Wow. Yeah, I mean, it was like this empowering midlife hobby. And he told me, like, nowadays he'll just, like, walk around and leave his house like with an instrument wherever he goes. So it's just kind of like, you know, this kind of large, nice black guy who just walks around rural Denmark, like playing the bongos and, like, surprise him. his neighbors. Dude sounds awesome.

Yeah, he is. And eventually he decided to start sharing his music with the world. And he chose the name Drum Coon as a stage name, kind of ironically, as a reference to the racist Coon songs that white Americans, I guess, couldn't get enough of in the early 1900s. And after he'd been on Spotify for a while, he started feeling just frustrated by the arbitrary nature of success on the app. Like, he looked at music like the ambient instrumentals on an official Spotify playlist,

like Serenity, and wondered. What's the difference between me and the other people making these songs? How do I get to the top? As a black man, as a DIY, it's like you're up against a mountain. I think some people have climbed a mountain. I don't know if you've ever done. In South Africa, there's a table mountain. Right, I've done table mountain.

It's beautiful. Okay. But how did you get up there? Oh, we took a trolley up. We took the trolley. There was a mechanism. This is interesting. very interesting Emmanuel.

There was a mechanism that helped you to get on top, but how do other people get up there? You could. You could. It seemed wild to me, but you could actually climb the whole thing. You could hike it. There was a path, yeah.

Yeah, right. So I feel as a DIY, it's like a dogy hiking. But I feel like for some other musicians up there, there is a pulley system designed for them to just... Have any given across one specific pulley system? that did not seem designed to help artists like him at all, his smart speaker.

I was wondering, how is it that this algorithm you can say to it some code with, you know, hey Google, play music, and then it just gives you major label music. You know, I was like, that did come be right. Oh, you're like, why would it not just play any music? Why is it only major label? Thank you.

That was one of the reasons. And thus, his hey, Alexa spam operation was born. But, like, for me, the thing I really cared about was how had any of these songs ended up on Kady's Spotify rap? Especially since she didn't have an Alexa and she's never heard of any of this music, right? And when I posed this question to Tendai, he actually gave me an answer I wasn't prepared for. You know, I couldn't possibly tell you how that happened. You know, that's a mystery. that probably I can solve it

I don't know you have to ask somebody else to solve that mystery because I cannot solve it you know Oh that's so weird Okay so now what So I don't know at this point right Like I don't know I was just like the answer has to be with Katie Right like it has to kind of be with her like Spotify account

And like what was going on in it So I was poking around on Spotify as well website and I found out that actually anyone can just request their listening history. Like Spotify will just give you a list of every song you've ever played on your Spotify account. So we put in that request and like a couple weeks later, Katie got it back. Hey Katie. Hey, how are you? I'm good. How are you? So Sonia and I, we called Katie. Yeah. And, you know, we opened the date that Spotify had sent. It would show me like the date that like a song was played, the time that like it finished playing, and like the number of milliseconds it played.

So of course, the first thing I did was just like search for drum coon. And you know how like when you like search in like a Google Doc, it shows you the amount of times a word pops up? Yes. It'll be like one of 156 or whatever. Totally. So like I searched it. Okay. I'm seeing.

Oh my God. Okay, do you want to guess how much it is? I'm scared. I have no idea. Oh my God. It's actually wild. If this is to be believed, it's actually, it's 964 is the number that I'm seeing. I'm screaming. 964. That's crazy.

Right? And so I decided I was going to try and click through like all the 964 to see where they happened, you know? Because I was like, that many songs has to be like spread out. But right away, I found two of Tendai's Drumcoon songs, like right next to each other that had played back to back. And the first of these was, OK, Google, play some music. Oh, my gosh. And then right after those songs, I saw a song by a person I didn't recognize at all. It's by this guy, Jeremy Aunt. Yeah. Do you know who that is? No, I don't think so. Let me, let's play that music. Let's see what that sounds like. We look it up and it's handpan

music, which is just like a lot of drum coon stuff. I've never heard something like that. And then in this list, it's just like song after song like this, like drumcoon songs mixed in with songs by other ambient music artists. Like Spotify was kind of doing its whole Pandora radio station thing, where it's playing artists like drum coon. Yeah. So I just, I just want to see how long this kind of, it's basically like a handpan bender

on your account. It's so, it's, I want to see how many songs it is. It's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. I want to say to you some kind of, you know, you're going for like multiple days long. I've been like scrolling down. It's multiple days. And basically what seems to have happened is that Ten Dives music played on Kelly's account for three straight days. That makes perfect sense.

That makes perfect sense. And I'm talking, when I say played for three straight days, I'm talking like every second of every day for three days is filled with music. Like from sun up, for sundown while she's asleep. Wild. Yeah. But here's the thing, like, I did not get. And she didn't get either, like, how she could have played music for three straight days and not noticed. Hmm.

So you want to know what I think, what my working theory is right now? Yes. So it has to do with one person who up until now has stayed out of this story. And who was really shocked when I confronted them about it? I think it was you. Me? No, I don't believe it. Yeah.

Like, no. Okay. Fake news. No. So that person is Katie's former roommate and one of her best friends, Gabby. I'd actually talk to Gabby early on when I was first poking around. You know, just to rule out whether someone close to Katie had gained. access to her Spotify somehow. And back then, Gabby had told me that no, she didn't have access

to Katie's Spotify. She'd never heard Drumcoo's music. And that like Katie, she owned a Google home. So there was no way that she could have conjured up the song, Hey, Alexa play music, because she didn't have an Alexa. And anyways, at the time, all of that made sense to me. But here's the thing, because this is Michigan, they actually, when they live together, they actually, like, have space. And so they have a two bed, two bathroom apartment. I was really wondering where because this is Michigan was going. I'm just saying, as I sit here in the tiny closet in my Brooklyn apartment, I'm just aware that I would, the things I would do for a two bed, two bath. But anyways, they lived in a two bed, do bath.

And like, she, unlike Katie, does listen to like a bunch of music. And they both kept their Google homes in their bathrooms. And their bathrooms kind of like, but they shared a wall. And Gabby did tell me that like every once in a while when like she would ask her Google home to play music, it would like Katie's Google Home would hear her through the walls and it would play that way. Is Katie's roommate really into handpans? Well, so Gabby doesn't listen to handpan music. But I think that Gabby like asked her Google Home to play some music. Katie's Google Home heard it.

But for some reason it was on like low to no volume. and just played for like a few days. And I think the only reason Katie didn't notice is because at the time she probably just like wasn't home or something because she has a boyfriend and like maybe she was staying over there. Amazing. And the biggest reason we didn't immediately see this link, Alex, was because I don't know, we were just like so thrown off by the Hey Alexa song.

Right. That makes sense. Yeah. But obviously like it turns out that the song Gabby would have actually brought up in that scenario wasn't Hey Alexa. So it was, hey, Google, play some music. And the only reason we didn't know that was because that song, Hey, Google, Play some music was actually taken off of Spotify before Spotify rapped came out last year.

Presumably because Spotify or, like, Drumcooster's distributors didn't like the fact that he was, like, doing his whole smart speaker thing, right? So it didn't show up on Katie's Spotify wrapped, and we didn't see it. Got it. Yeah. So, I don't know. I was explaining all of this to Gabby, and it was really. funny because Gabby was one of Katie's friends who made fun of her the most for having

Drum Coon as one of her top artists. So now she's just super embarrassed now that she realizes it's like her fault. You know what? I'm happy that Katie has something to come back at her with every time you talk about this story and make fun of her for it. Yeah, I really won't live this down probably till the next Spotify rap comes out. I got to say, man, you're really cut out for super tech support. You really crossed all your teas and dotted your eyes on this. this one. I'm impressed. Thank you, Alex. That honestly, it means a lot. Although, I don't know, there was one thing that I was kind of worried about, which is

what would happen to Ten Dye's music, you know, like, Drumcoe's music, once I, like, expose this whole, Hey, Alexa thing. Because I figured Spotify might do something about it, especially if I had to ask him for comment. And Drumcoon knew our show was owned by Spotify, and when we talked about it, like, you know, he wanted to talk to me anyways. But I checked this morning, and Spotify and the distributor he used to upload a lot of his songs, they actually removed a ton of his music. Oh, no. That's so sad.

But, you know, if the past is any indication, he will figure out a workaround. The dude seems pretty creative when it comes to putting up songs that are called Hey, Google or Alexa. Well, so here's the thing. I called him and I was like, yo, dude, I'm so sorry about this. And, you know, why he was bummed, he kind of didn't care because he was just like, well, you know, I've ever really. already had music taken down. Some of the rest of my music is up. And you know what?

I'm just happy for people to listen to my music about weird titles and stuff like that. He's gone legit. Good for him. Yeah. Seriously. Long live drumkin. This episode of Reply All was produced by me,

Sonia Dosani, and Fia Benin. It was edited by Damiano Marquetti. And of course, the episode wouldn't have happened without the rest of the Reply All production and editing team, Anna Foley, Bethelhabte, Tim Howard, Lisa Wang, and Kim Naderfane Peterson. Our intern is Sam Gabauer.

The show is hosted by Emmanuel Jochi and Alex Goldman. This episode was mixed by Rick Kwan with fact-checking by Isabel Christo, music and sound design by Luke Williams. Additional music by Breakmaster Cylinder, Mariana Romano, and Tim Howard. Special thanks to Natish Pawa, Ellen Frankman, Max Green, Rayhan Hermansi, Tad Davis, and Camus Iololia. One last announcement before we go, we're hiring. We're looking for a producer to come help us make stories.

So if that's you, go to replyallshow.com slash jobs. Once again, that's replyallshow.com slash jobs. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.