I searched Google to find music from one of my bands streaming for free without my permission. I searched further and found the same for my solo music.
Apparently someone else had uploaded our songs, part of them from someone with plenty of offensive / questionably racist content on their page (note that this is particularly offensive considering the band includes black/Jewish and LGBT members).
I immediately emailed the company with the standard copyright infringement "cease and desist" notice letter. It took at least a week before I got any reply, during which time I repeatedly re-sent the notice, thinking perhaps they had not received it.
When I eventually got a reply they told me that they had received some of the songs directly from CD Baby, who I had used to distribute only one album by the band (but not for my solo music). They told me it was "not editable" and to talk with CD baby, which I, in turn did. CD baby replied with: "We will request that this album be removed from last. Fm's service —please allow up to 30 days for it to be fully removed."
So CD baby did their part and that one album was removed, but only temporarily.
Somehow our music ended up on there again, and again I emailed last. Fm with the standard copyright infringement "cease and desist" notice letter.
They did not reply at all, so I signed up at the site and posted on the pages about how this was pirated music and this site is ripping me off. One user replied, rather rudely, explaining how stupid I was for not knowing that I could take over the band page using my last. Fm account. So I eventually found how to do this (they hide it very well).
When I used their "music manager", it REQUIRED me to upload a trackbefore I could proceed to any editing of the page (which I workedaround by uploading a track that was not an actual song).
Then I get through all that just to find that I do NOT have actual control of the page—I can only delete songs which I personally uploaded.
They will not allow me to delete the band pages, nor to delete my content that was uploaded by other users.
I also cannot I stop other people from editing in false info, or remove rude/racist/attacking comments on the front page "shout box". I can also not remove false "tags" put in by other users, some of which are very offensive. I also cannot remove the amazingly un-similar "similar artists" which users there lumped us in with.
They asked me to enter my publishing info to collect royalties for the streaming songs (as if treating the site as internet "radio"), which I did, but they do not report to ASCAP the usage of tracks uploaded by users other than me, so I get NO royalties from my music streaming and being downloaded for FREE.
They also will not allow me to remove my images / logos that were uploaded by other users, some of which were obviously edited to make me look bad (including quasi-racist symbols superimposed on a photo of me that came from my personal myspace page, as well as other personal myspace/facebook photos that never appeared on any album).
It appears that someone on that site has been e-stalking me and my bandmate stealing our pics to add on these last. Fm pages.
Both the pages for my band and for my solo music had songs which I/we never publicly released, and one had only been on myspace for one day as a "demo version" and the other on Youtube as background music for a video I made once.
The music had obviously been illegally slurped from youtube and/or myspace.
Someone also made a last. Fm "band" page named after my singer's personal myspage page username, not even our band name, and put personal images and songs from the band in there.
Note: The now-defunct band played acoustic music primarily andmisleading tags like "country music", "rockabilly" and "alt-country"apparently attracted a lot of racists with Klan, Nazi and similarimagery and text on their pages, which last. Fm clearly does not findinappropriate enough to remove. There are also no "report copyrightinfringement" or "flag inappropriate content" buttons on their site.
This has led to me being harassed, both on their site via comments (users saying how I am "greedy", "elitist" or "stupid" for not wanting to supposedly "promote" my music in this way) as well as on other sites and via email because of some of the racist and offensive comments, tags, and falsely listed similar artists.
In short: last. Fm allows people to post artists' music, images and name without their permission, add false and offensive comments and tags, and they will not remove any of it.
Since I am a US citizen, and they are UK-based, I'm not sure what I can do to get my content permanently removed from their terrible website.
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