Even the Artist is Clueless on What Happened to This Album

[hansenkd]

So this classic album of early 80s yacht rock just got disappeared, possibly as late as today.
https://open.spotify.com/album/08zLU0fv6Dp4E16GUPeRTm

I followed Spotify's instructions and dutifully posted a message on Robbie Durpree's official Facebook page.  Received a reply almost instantly asking what "greyed out" meant.  Looks like it might have been from Dupree himself.

So the artist himself has no idea what happened to the album.  Contacting the label is always a losing proposition.  And we all know that some joker will post the form response that everybody has seen thousands of times in response to this.

The problem is that this is the only legitimate way to get "Steal Away" and "Hot Rod Hearts" (the hit singles), but there are umpteen bazillion sources for a re-recorded version.  Incidentally, the album also is not on iTunes, but people are buying the re-record, apparently.

I don't buy the argument that Spotify has no idea what happens to these albums and artists.  I just don't buy it.  "Conact the artist and the label!"  Yeah, Spotify isn't ignorant about specific cases.  They just won't comment on them.

[MattSuda]

Hey @hansenkd

Spotify cannot disable (grey out) a song or album just because it wants to. All changes are made at request of the record label/distributor of the content.

The album was most likely pulled down from the record label or the distibutor that the record label uses. Record labels are not always 100% in contact with the artists so that's why the artist might not know what happened to it because the record label is in charge of managing it. Sometimes the album or song will be unavailable temporary, and come back again later if the record label or distributor is making changes.

The songs/albums will still be shown in your playlists so you can keep track of them. Make sure to go in settings and check for the setting that shows unavailable songs.

[hansenkd]

I know all that, but the label always has a reason for doing what it does.  And I just don't believe that they don't communicate those reasons to Spotify.  We all know that contacting labels is pointless--they never reply, even if there is some contact form to fill out.  I'm not saying Spotify is responsible for content being removed.  What I AM saying is that it's not credible that Spotify doesn't KNOW the reasons for the removal (the label had to have communicated them), and it's annoying that Spotify doesn't tell us the reasons.  We all know the labels won't, and the news media won't make it an issue unless it's something huge like the Tay-Tay thing or Prince.

So the bottom line is that we all stay in the dark about the reasons for the removal of content, nobody will tell us why, including Spotify, which must know why.  The Andy Gibb thing is a classic example.  This was a massively major artist in the late 1970s and early 1980s--one who has been dead for almost 30 years.  His content vanishes when the Bee Gees change labels, and even though the Bee Gees content is still around, Andy's is gone, and he's far too dead to do anything about it.  And we hear absolutely nothing from anybody about the reasons.  And we have absolutely no idea if and when it will ever come back.  The standard responses and the cookie-cutter language get tiresome after a while.  We know how it happens.  We know Spotify is not responsible.  We want specific information, which we will never get from a label, and which Spotify won't communicate even though it's not credible that they don't know.

[artful_dodger59]

All I have to say on this is, it's a crock of $hit!