> Recently, I mentioned to a band it was sad they pulled their music off Spotify. Puzzled, they were not even aware that the licensing was pulled, and they had to go yell at their record label (who was unaware they were even on Spotify because they made less than a dollar in royalties per year on it) who has sat on it for over a year and refused to release the rights back to the artist so they can have it available on Spotify.

That band didn't own their music and the "label" likely didn't either. They got fronted money that was never repaid (as per contract) and their shit traded hands multiple times. There was wild consolidation in this world over the last 10 - 25 years. What used to be money printing turned to "GOT EM!!" dollar signs in bold on contracts, which turned to small joints falling over (dollars and commas in bold didn't map on the backend) and now some banger owns their shit.

Most likely the banger who owned their shit lost it in the shuffle of the more banger shit they owned, or the overhead of the split with the 5% the small label who was able to retain that cut didn't even render on the P&L and they just shoved it in the virtual vault because who gives a fuck?