In March 2014, the funk band Vulfpeck released Sleepify — ten tracks of silence, each just over 30 seconds long. The band encouraged fans to stream it on a loop overnight. Every play earned about $0.007 in Spotify royalties; The Guardian estimated that seven hours of overnight streaming per device would accumulate $5.88.
Spotify initially called it "clever" and compared it to John Cage's 4'33", then pulled the album in late April for unspecified content policy violations. By then Vulfpeck had logged about 5.5 million plays and earned $19,655 in royalties, with an additional $1,100 anticipated. They used the money to stage the admission-free Sleepify Tour across six US cities in September 2014.
Band founder Jack Stratton said the stunt was about the logic of streaming: "with the technology available, that dictates the packaging of the music—whether it's a three-minute 7-inch or a 40-minute 12-inch or an eight-minute 12-inch single or a 70-minute CD. And now it's Spotify. This is just taking it to the max of short song length and extremely high volumes of play." In 2015 Stratton proposed a more equitable payout model in which each artist's share would be based on their own listeners rather than total platform plays.
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