Blankership & Co.: The Uncanny Underbelly of Spotify Artistry

The “cover” for Snow Blankership’s 2019 “album” Rebel Tapestry Cat.

I am most certainly not going to qualify my interest in or investigation into this matter as anything important. This is far more indicative of my having very little to do while being stuck at home than it is of this question’s importance. What I will say is that this has proven to be one of the most intriguing rabbit holes I’ve fallen down in a very long time. I don’t blame you if you come to disagree with that assertion. In fact, I’m not sure I agree with it. The upshot is that I’m really bored. 

Right, then, let’s get on with it. Who the hell is Snow Blankership?

I can’t imagine you’ve heard of them. I certainly haven’t. A cursory search on Google yields links to their pages on Spotify, Amazon Music, and various other streaming services—but little else. Attempting to track them down on rating aggregates like Metacritic or RateYourMusic provides no leads, nor does attempting to source their music back to a record label or distributor, as the copyright information accompanying their releases indicates their music is self-distributed. Their artist page features no press photos. No biography. No concerts past or future. The only image which seems to characterize Snow Blankership on any platform is the cover of their 2019 release Rebel Tapestry Cat: a monochromatic, skyward-facing photo of four buildings ostensibly taken at a city intersection.

I’m inclined to profile this record—I want to give it a fair shake—but I have far too many questions to even begin a critical appraisal. Rebel Tapestry Cat consists of fifteen songs seemingly of dance and electronic pedigree whose common denominator is the use of jazz and lounge music samples. House cuts “Leaf Neon Light” and “Pillar Slide” feature such sampled elements quite prominently. Dubstep and bass-adjacent numbers “Magazine Dolphin,” “Down Light Lollipop,” and “Limit Engineer” drown their samples in waves of reverberating sub-bass, their lead elements barely discernible. Album openers “Alphabet Wagon” and “Briefcase Gallery” lack electronic elements altogether, their easy listening sensibilities ultimately betraying my attempts to define whatever sense of cohesion the record had. Accompanying these are explorations of trap, instrumental hip-hop, jungle, and breaks, which out this series of distinct and ultimately half-baked modal experiments. 

But I have been remiss. I have concealed from you the fact that certain production qualities are not simply iterated upon, but are in fact duplicated. “Leaf Neon Light” shares its drum programming with “Pillar Slide.” The filtered bass pattern which conceals a jaunty piano in “Magazine Dolphin” conceals what I believe to be a trombone in “Down Light Lollipop.” In fact, I’ve kept from you a number of details about this curious situation. The aforementioned album cover is a stock photo rotated 90 degrees in the clockwise direction. “Alphabet Wagon” has been played over 37,000 times; “Album Brick,” just over 38,000 times. Bearing that in mind, would you be more surprised to learn that Snow Blankership has fewer than 135 monthly listeners, or that they all reside in the two geographically disparate locations of Hemet, California and Brooklyn, New York? 

Again: who is Snow Blankership? I don’t know. We might as well ask the same question of Paulo Bottoms, Kourtney Merkin, Arrana Animalia, Zizzy Nackbasher, or Anvil Orbingray. These are just a few of the dozen-plus “artists” I have found in this odd little corner of Spotify whose profile photos are black-and-white stock images; whose monthly listeners are few in spite of tens of thousands of song plays; whose album and song names consist of two-to-three word sequences; who I have determined do not exist. 

If we are to trust precedent, we could reasonably relate this odd behavior to alleged patterns of astroturfing seen on Spotify over the past several years. Music industry blog Music Behavior Worldwide was the first to blow the whistle on the inclusion of music released by non-existent artists on prominent first-party Spotify playlists in late summer 2016. MBW went as far as to allege that the inclusion of such songs, whose master rights were apparently company-owned, on popular ‘chill-out’ and ambient playlists was part of a company effort to manipulate its own royalty payment system and generate clandestine sources of revenue, thereby suppressing profits earned by genuine artists whose songs’ popularity was outstripped by that of the service’s own content. Entertainment outlet Vulture corroborated MBW’s reporting in summer 2017, at which point Spotify categorically denied the creation of ‘fake’ artists for monetary gain. A contemporary investigation by The Verge did not concur with MBW’s allegations of malfeasance, but attributed Spotify’s surplus of library content—mostly stock piano music intended for relaxation—to obscure licensing arrangements. It’s not fraud, but it certainly seems dishonest.

With this controversy in mind, I began to consider whether the true identities of Blankership & Co. were subject to the same forms of obfuscation highlighted by The Verge. The fundamental difference between the situation MBW raised in its initial reports and the one I’m describing here is that Blankership and other artists like them appears on multiple streaming services, of which Spotify is arguably the most prominent; while suspicious, this situation does not seem to involve surreptitious corporate activity. Nevertheless, standing on the slippery precipice between ‘caring about actually important things’ and ‘finding out why Snow Blankership exists,’ in referring to a certain performance rights organization’s repertory I decided to fall in the latter direction. Said repertory readily provided the true identity of the writer to whom Snow Blankership’s work is credited (to preserve their privacy, their identity will remain concealed). I was relieved that I had found closure. I had finally determined that Snow Blankership is connected in some way to a real person, and is not the product of a 24 month-long sociological study conducted by Harvard University or something.

Of course, I can never leave well enough alone. I couldn’t have just closed the tab and accepted victory, because that would be too rational. Instead, cursing myself, I made the mistake of clicking on our mysterious writer’s name to examine their full repertoire. This 17 page catalog constitutes over 1,600 entries—keep in mind, each entry is one song—performed by non-existent artists. In case you were wondering, the answer is yes: our mystery individual, a person apparently of many names, claims writing credit on every single entry. However, this is the point where the trail officially runs cold.

While I could contact this person and directly inquire as to their motives, I believe this would run afoul of good taste. I’m forced to let it be, but I’m left wondering ‘why?’ Do these “artists” serve as repositories for musical ideas; have I stumbled upon a producer’s effort to monetize unreleased material? Or is Snow Blankership emblematic of an effort to game the system, a realization of industry insiders’ fears? 

I cannot answer any of these questions. I can only say that, for my own sake, I want never to be entangled in anything of this nature ever again.