Streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music and Pandora are popular amongst students on campus. Other than providing students with large varieties of music genres for students to suit their music-listening needs, there have been reports of artist’s music being leaked. Famous artists have has unreleased material being leaked onto non-music mediums such as podcasts in order to avoid being taken off.

Famous artists such as Travis Scott and Playboi Carti have had their unreleased material leaked onto these streaming services under a fake name and different medium. According to Zach Lutz of The Badger Herald, “On Oct. 14, “Rager Universe” surfaced on Spotify and Apple Music, a 15 song compilation of unreleased and unofficial Travis Scott tracks.” Unreleased material is important for students to consider because of how they could potentially be listening to illegal, pirated music even though it is classified as “new”.

Another problem with artists’ songs leaking onto various streaming platforms is that if this keeps happening, then is a chance the streaming services could get shut down. While this may be unlikely, popular streaming services such as Apple Music and Spotify try to prevent this from happening by taking down any signs of leaked music. According to Noah Yoo of Picthfork, there could still be legal trouble with music distribution sites and leaked music. Noah interviewed a manager of an unsigned band whose music leaked and explained how they had to get lawyers involved until Spotify took the leaked music down. “According to the manager, it took three days for Spotify to remove it. ‘That was the first time we contacted a lawyer,’ the manager said. ‘We didn’t end up needing to pursue legal action, but we came to the conclusion that it is incredibly hard to even sue anyone who you cannot legally identify.’” This can be a problem with various popular music streaming programs for students due to the tension of the services getting shut down or the potential risk of students downloading illegal music onto their phones without them even realizing what they’re doing.