Slackeye Slim Latest to Pull Music Amid False Streaming Fraud Notices

News 15 Comments


Songwriter and musician Joe Frankland, better known by his artist name Slackeye Slim, has been a creative force in underground country for over 15 years. His conceptualized Western album El Santo Grial, La Pistola Piadosa won Saving Country Music’s 2011 Album of the Year, and his 2023 album Scorched Earth, Black Heart was also well-received.

But unfortunately, you can no longer navigate to your favorite DSP of choice (Spotify, Apple Music, etc.) and spin any of Slackeye Slim’s titles, thanks to yet another pernicious and pervasive issue plaguing the digital music space in the technological dystopia that continues to entrench itself.

As fraud runs rampant on these music distribution networks, companies take punitive actions to attempt to curb it that ultimately affect innocent artists negatively, and nowhere is a human reachable to solve these problems. The whole livelihoods of some artists are simply written off as collateral damage in the algorithmic/AI approach to policing fraud, while ironically, much of the fraud continues unabated.

In late May, Slackeye Slim received a notice from his music distributor TuneCore warning him that his music had been flagged for illegal streaming activity. Clearly, performers paying for artificial streams is a real issue, and something worthy of addressing. But an underground country artist who only pursues music part-time would not be one of these guilty parties.

The warning also said, “In line with our and our store partners’ policies, if we continue to receive reports that the content noted above is generating artificial streams, TuneCore will process full, all-store takedowns, and you will be subject to a financial penalty of €10 per track per month where artificial streams account for almost all of the track’s total streams.”

Slackeye Slim had been working with TuneCore since 2008, and was a premium subscriber to the service. Nonetheless, he was unable to receive a response from support about the matter. “I wrote and reminded them that I had been a customer for many years and let them know I was not happy. I had not received a response, so I pulled all of my music offline to avoid being penalized. Many other musicians have simply had their music removed without warning.”

He also reached out to Spotify, who told him to consult his distributor (TuneCore). Slackeye was able to determine through Spotify that on February 16th and 17th, a song received 1,800 plays that normally would have only received a dozen. These weren’t plays that Slackeye Slim had anything to do with, and as soon as fake plays are detected, they are immediately deleted, so he hadn’t received credit for them in any way. They also happened four months before he was notified about them.

“My story is repeated over and over again in YouTube videos, Reddit posts, etc.” says Slackeye Slim. “Essentially, these distributors are punishing their customers for something they have nothing to do with, all while refusing to help resolve it. As far as I can tell, no one is doing anything about it. They are not being held accountable. It seems that they are viewing these fines as additional revenue. It’s highway robbery.”

Slackeye Slim is definitely not alone. An artist named Benn Jordan with 1.6 million annual listeners had 23 albums removed from DSPs for alleged streaming fraud in 2024. Benn Jordan was also a TuneCore customer, though according to many, DistroKid can be even worse in these matters.

As Benn Jordan said, “Whether this is malice related to my Spotify criticism or simply negligence, this is dystopian for reasons much larger than myself or my loss of income … being erased from existence and gaslit is among one of the worst things that can happen to an artist.”

After pulling his music, Slackeye Slim tried to re-upload his music through a different distributor, but one of the DSPs continued to put up roadblocks.

“I was informed that I had to change the artwork for ‘Santo Grial’ because the AI these DSPs use can’t differentiate between text in the artwork and the text for the artist/title. So I paid someone to remove the text in the artwork of a 14 year old album. Next, I got a notification saying I couldn’t publish ‘Scorched Earth – Black Heart’ unless I replace the dash with a comma and also change the artwork to reflect that. They are now dictating what we can call our albums.

“It’s way out of control. I just made the decision to not redistribute to DSPs. It’s gonna hurt, yeah, but I’m not going to bow down to some billionaire (Daniel Ek) and his AI who already treats music made by real people like a valueless commodity.”

That means Slackeye Slim’s music will not be returning to streaming services anytime soon.

“I don’t make a lot of money from music, but it’s enough to set aside to pay for releasing new music,” he says. “I can’t imagine the burden this would put on an independent musician who is actually trying to use their music to pay the bills.”

Many full-time musicians are also facing this dilemma as the DSPs continue to lean more and more into AI and bots to police the online music marketplace, and refuse to give musicians the option to speak to a human who could often solve the issue in minutes.

You can still purchase Slackeye Slim’s music directly at slackeyeslim.com/shop.

– – – – – – – –

If you found this article valuable, consider leaving Saving Country Music A TIP.



© 2025 Saving Country Music