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Taylor Swift briefly returns to Spotify, miscredited to Lostprophets

By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 8 December 2015

Taylor Swift was back on the free streaming services this week, but only temporarily and miscredited to Lostprophets.

Swift’s song ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ appeared on Spotify and Deezer, as well as the iTunes and Amazon download stores, listed as a Lostprophets song. It has now been taken down from all four.

The hoax seems to date back to October, when the miscredited track was uploaded to a YouTube channel with the same artwork (a screengrab of animated TV series ‘Scaredy Squirrel’) that appeared on the digital music services this week. It got little attention back then, and appears to be a prank attempted with other songs previously.

It’s not clear if the same person then took things a step further by submitting the track to the audio streaming and download platforms. Nor is it known which distributor failed to flag up the issue before delivering the digital file – Lostprophets having also been listed as the releasing label.

A Spotify spokesperson said in a statement: “The track in question was delivered to us by a provider, whose responsibility it is to ensure that content delivered to Spotify is fully licensed and in compliance with our Infringement Policy. We take the integrity of our catalogue very seriously, and will immediately remove any content that is found to be incorrectly licensed or attributed to the incorrect artist or composer”.

They continued: “The track was taken down as soon as it was discovered (three days after it was delivered), and we will be taking the matter further with the provider who delivered this track”.

Swift, of course, removed her entire catalogue from Spotify and Deezer last year, in protest against the streaming services’ freemium tiers. Lostprophets split in 2013 following the arrest (and subsequent conviction) of frontman Ian Watkins for the sexual abuse of children.