Why Does Charley Crockett Appear In Paul Cauthen Searches on Spotify?

Radio/Media 28 Comments


April 3rd was a big release day in the independent country realm, with a couple heavy hitters releasing major albums on the same day. While Charley Crockett released the third installment from his “Sagebrush Trilogy” called Age of the Ram, Paul Cauthen released his latest record Book of Paul. The Droptines, Luke Grimes, Shelby Stone, Same Barber, and Heath James Hardin (Olds Sleeper), and others also released important records.

Since Charley Crockett and Paul Cauthen are both artists that are originally from Texas and generally reside in the retro style of country music (or the “hipster” side if you will), nobody should be surprised to see both their names on the same playlists, festival posters, and other such things. Clearly the two have very distinctly different approaches to music, but many listeners are apt to be fans of both.

That said, there’s at least somewhat of a rivalry between the two, or at least no love lost. In September of 2025, Paul Cauthen took to social media to very directly call Charley Crockett out for basically being a fraud.

“Stop being a pathological liar and thinking that you’re something that you’re not. You’re just a singer that’s ripping off the past, that’s bringing it in like it’s your blood and your sh-t. Well, you’re not related to Davy Crockett and you’re not fu–ing Bob Wills. So just go play,” Cauthen said in part.

That’s why I was surprised that when searching on Spotify for the new Paul Cauthen album by quite literally entering “Paul Cauthen,” the very first thing that came up and in highlighted form was Charley Crockett’s Age of the Ram, not Paul Cauthen, or his new album Book of Paul.


Recommending Age of the Ram to someone who might be a Paul Cauthen fan makes some sense. But to recommend Charley Crockett and Age of the Ram over the actual artist and the actual album you’re looking for? That not only seems counter-productive. It seems a little scandalous. How and why would Spotify allow such a thing?

Shocked at this search result, I screenshot it, completely closed out of the Spotify app, then re-opened it, and tried searching specifically for Paul Cauthen, but in the album category. Once again, Charley Crockett came up first.


Something else that’s interesting is that when filling out the search window, when the auto-complete suggestions populated as I started typing in Paul Cauthen’s name, it wasn’t Paul Cauthen’s album that came up first in the suggestion tree, but Charley Crockett’s.


Since I had been listening to both albums lately, I wondered if that might be the reason I was receiving these suggestions. So I deleted cache and cookies, tried separate devices, asked buddies to do a search and see what they came up with. Most every time, the search results for Paul Cauthen still came up with Charley Crockett on top, and over multiple days, devices, and users.

To be fair, there were a few times Cauthen actually did come up first, especially on mobile devices. But even then Crockett and/or Age of the Ram was still very high in the search results, including one time where I searched “Paul Cauthen,” a few of his songs came up first, but Charley Crockett’s artist account still came up before Paul’s account.

Another search did bring up Book of Paul first as it should have, but Charley Crockett second above other Paul Cauthen suggestions.


But the two graphics above were the exception, not the rule. So this made me wonder if there were other artists who if you searched for them, Charley Crockett would come up first, especially performers who might be somewhat aligned with the same style or subgenre as Charley Crockett. So I tried Charles Wesley Godwin, but that didn’t result in anything. Then I tried Drayton Farley, Cody Jinks, and a few others. No dice.

Then I put in The Wilder Blue. Though Age of the Ram didn’t come up first, it definitely came up higher than you would expect, right under The Wilder Blue’s artist profile, and above any album from The Wilder Blue themselves.


So what does all of this mean?

First, let’s not assume that whatever is happening here is something nefarious from Charley Crockett himself, or that it’s even targeted at Paul Cauthen specifically since it appears to be affecting other artist searches as well.

Spotify does have a “Discovery Mode” featurem, which a way that artists and labels can accept a lower royalty rate (there’s a 30% commission fee) to have music boosted to help it “stand out” as Spotify likes to say. This is usually done via algorithmic recommendations like the song that plays after the song or album you searched for finishes (Autoplay), or Spotify’s “Radio” feature for artists or genres.

Discovery Mode has been criticized for being a modern version of payola, giving an advantage to artists with deep pockets who can pay for the privilege of getting played more, playlisted more, and in this instance, maybe even being goosed in searches for other artists, making it more likely you’ll interact with their music. In the attention economy, exposure and what comes up first is everything.

However, Spotify’s Discovery Mode is generally not available for an album or a track until 30 days after it has been released, so it seems unlikely that’s what is going on here with the Charley Crockett/Paul Cauthen searches. Discovery Mode definitely does play a role in what you interface with on Spotify, and where.

Recently while at an Easter shindig, someone was playing the Red Clay Stray’s Spotify Radio channel. As you can guess, there was a lot of Red Clay Strays, some Zach Bryan and Turnpike Troubadours, Sturgill Simpson and Tyler Childers in the mix. But I was rather stupefied to hear a strong presence of Gavin Adcock in the playlist as well—someone who’s had public altercations with both Zach Bryan, Charley Crockett, and other independent country artists.

The 50-song playlist had a curiously tight range of artist featured, and Gavin Adcock had six selections. In the independent country world, Gavin Adcock isn’t just polarizing, he’s absolutely vilified, even if in the mainstream world, they equate Gavin to artists like The Red Clay Strays, Paul Cauthen, and Charley Crockett. Very likely the reason Gavin Adcock appears on that playlist is due to Discovery Mode activations.

Many Spotify users complain about Spotify’s recommendations these days, though the streaming giant used to be curiously spot-on with their selections, and one of the best streaming companies for true organic discovery. Now if you’re searching for Paul Cauthen, you might get served up Charley Crockett who Cauthen called a fraud. Or if you’re listening to Zach Bryan, a Gavin Adcock track might play next when they recently almost went fisticuffs, just like it currently does on Red Clay Strays Radio. Ironically, artists don’t control who is on their own radio stations.


All of this is presented to make the public aware. Why does one artist rise and another artist fall? Why does it seem to make no sense why your favorite artist or band struggles for traction while someone like Gavin Adcock puts together massive streaming numbers? It’s because of the way these algorithms work, how they game our attention, and how we interact with them.

Charley Crockett is one of the hardest working guys in country music. Age of the Ram was his third album in a year. And again, he might not have any idea that any of this is happening, let alone had any say so in it himself. Crockett coming up in Paul Cauthen searches could simply be a bug in the system for all we know, or it could be the search algorithm adopting to a curious amount of searches for Charley Crockett.

Ultimately, it’s these kinds of instances that increase the gulf between the have’s and the have not’s. It’s unlikely this is an isolated incident in the Spotify universe. It’s probably happening to numerous artists and across genres. Users are pulling up different artists than they ones they’re searching for, resulting in a redirection of attention to artists they didn’t originally intend to listen to.

As algorithms get gamed by paid-for schemes, and are more automated than ever with the human element taken out of the equation—and now AI making many of the decisions of what you’re listening to—music consumers should be more aware of what’s happening.

Streaming companies, Instagram, and TikTok can still be useful for discovery to a certain extent. But good old-fashioned word of mouth, playlists curated by humans, and music outlets and influencers that refuse “pay to play” models is really the best way to know you’re getting honest to goodness recommendations coming straight from the heart as opposed to what you’re being pushed by the industry, no different than corporate country radio.

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Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that “Discovery Mode” on Spotify is not available until 30 days after a song or album is released.

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