What is fraud?
Fraud is defined as wrongful or criminal deception; Merriam-Webster defines it as “an act of deceiving or misrepresenting“. And it is a crime.
Fraud happens, in this use case, when someone uploads a song to a streaming service under a name, or bandname, that is not theirs.
Tally Hall, Miracle Musical, and Joe Hawley himself have all fallens victim to fraud, and in this, unfortunately long history, we deconstruct the false uploads, the fakers, and the fraudsters.

The earliest one I can currently find was uploaded to the Miracle Musical account, and was titled ‘Floating On Your Memories‘. It went up on the 17th of July 2020, and remains removed from most accounts, but still marrs the official Miracle Musical account on Tidal.

Tally Hall would then fell victim to a fraudulent upload soon after on the 30th of July 2020, where a low-effort song called ‘Walls‘ was uploaded under the Tally Hall name. It was a very uninspiring instrumental electro song, fraudulently uploaded in an attempt to garner more streams, and in turn, more revenue. It was swiftly removed, but that did not stop the fraudsters.

In 2022 Ross called out Spotify for allowing fraudsters to upload works in their name:

I don’t understand how @spotify STILL hasn’t closed the loophole that seems to let anyone upload songs to artists’ profiles without any oversight from the actual artists…

— Ross Federman (@rossfederman) April 30, 2022

And when it happened again, a year and a half later, he called it out once more:

Issue is primarily with the distributors, but platforms like Spotify, YouTube, and AppleMusic can still do some oversight. But again, the real problem is with people just straight up committing fraud

— Ross Federman (@rossfederman) September 6, 2023

Around October last year, Joe Hawley’s streaming accounts were inundated with low-effort tracks uploaded in his name. I won’t go into them, because they were done for attention, and to give them attention is giving them what they want. But know that they were incessant, childish, and uninspiring. At the same time other songs would get uploaded as Spotify “Podcast Episodes”, including Rob Cantor’s ‘Going Purple‘. Regardless of the format they are uploaded, it is still fraud.

Joe would go on to delete his DistroKid due to repeated fraudulent uploads in his name. Saying:
“To anyone concerned: I had to cancel DistroKid because the account was too hackable; a more professional “label” may be in the cards at some juncture. Thank you all“.
Note: Joe saying the account was “Hackable” is a misnomer, as there was likely no forced entry into his account. The fraudster most likely employed the classic distribution service loophole by setting their name as ‘Joe Hawley’, and due to there being no Two-Factor Authentication, it was uploaded without approval.

Today, in 2024, it’s still happening.

You might have seen the AI generated slop titled “Lost In The Shadows” that was uploaded to the ミラクルミュージカル account earlier last month, or the version of The Mind Electric that was uploaded as “Un Released” when in reality it was released, as it’s the Cojum Dip instrumental, as featured on Hawaii: Part II Part ii, released in 2014. Both of these instances are cases of fraud.

You may have seen that Joe Hawley’s singles ‘Special’, as well as ‘Yes Please &/Or Weird Bed’ have been “re-uploaded” to streaming services, but why would Joe reupload these songs after denouncing DistroKid so vocally? Well, since we at Hidden In The Sand have seen streaming fraud time and time again, we know the telltale signs, and we will deconstruct them here:

Special

The original Spotify upload for Special:

The Reupload:

Notice how ‘Nabors’ is no longer credited, We have also been keeping track of uploads via the Tally Hallmanac, and as we reported there, the original was released under ‘729374 Records DK’, DK being short for DistroKid. If you don’t put anything in the ‘Record Label’ section of the DistroKid upload, one is generated for you using your account number; this unique number is different in the reupload. The reupload was listed as ‘8024327 Records DK‘, which almost completely proves that this reupload was done by a different user.

Yes Please &/or Weird Bed

The original upload:

The reupload:

(These screenshots were taken in different clients, so bare with me)
Once again, we have the wrong date, with the reupload saying it was released on the 14th of February, instead of the 15th. As we reported on the Hallmanac, the song was a Bandcamp exclusive for the 14th, and was released to streaming on the 15th. And again, copyrights and publishing being 2024 instead of the original 2019.

Yelwah Eoj Yelwah Eoj

The original upload:

The reupload:

First, and biggest slip up: the Y is lowercase on the re-upload! Rookie mistake! Second, the streaming numbers for the backwards songs have disappeared, leading me to think that this is a reupload rather than a renewal of service. The publishing and copyright information has been updated to 2024, instead of it’s original publishing year of 2019. Also, most all of the tracks are, inexplicably, different lengths.

While you may be celebrating that your favourite song is back on your favourite streaming service, remember, fraud could happen to you. In this current climate, someone could take your work, reupload it somewhere else, and make money off of it. And that’s really uncool.

And if you’re the person doing this, I want you to know that just because it’s not on your favourite streaming service, does not give you the right to take it, and upload it wherever you please and potentially make money off of it. Even if you don’t plan on “making money” from it, or “donating the money to charity” IT IS STILL FRAUD, AND IT IS STILL A CRIME.
Spotify has this really cool system called ‘Local Files’ in which you can upload your local files and listen to them on the go.
Most all Tally Hall & related works are on Bandcamp, (As well as really cool demo albums which aren’t on Spotify) just pay for them once and you own them forever! Bonus points: The original artists get a fair share of the money!

It’s worth noting that a similar situation happened with the artist Lemon Demon, who had many of his early albums uploaded to Spotify illegally. This has since made it impossible for Needlejuice Records or Neil Cicierega to upload these albums onto Spotify officially, due to the way Spotify handles repeated uploads of the same content. If unofficial uploads continue, it could lead to a situation where members of Tally Hall can’t upload songs to streaming services because of these unofficial illegal uploads.

Please,
be respectful, and be good.
Thank you

(Co-written by Hailey Carol)

EDIT: The Joe Hawley ‘Fraudsters’ have come forward publicly and have reached out to us.

Reddit users Salty_Principle_109 and OtherGuyWhoDidIt have come forward in a public post, apologising for their misdeeds. The post reads:

Apologies to Joe and to you all

To Joe Hawley and the Tally Hall community,

I want to sincerely apologize for what I’ve done. In trying to bring the music back to Spotify, I crossed a boundary that I now fully realize should never have been crossed. It was wrong, and I take full responsibility for my actions. While a friend helped in this, I want to be the one speaking on behalf of us both.

I live with schizophrenia, and sometimes it makes me feel an intense connection to things I care deeply about, like Joe’s work. That connection became unhealthy and led to a decision I deeply regret. This doesn’t excuse what I did in any way, but I wanted to share the context behind my actions, even if it’s hard to admit.

I’ll be taking down the songs we uploaded because it wasn’t our place to share them. If it wasn’t Joe’s choice, it shouldn’t have been ours either.

To Joe and the Tally Hall community, I’m truly sorry for the harm I’ve caused. My actions came from a place of admiration, but I see now that I went about things in the worst way. I’ve learned from this, and I’ll work to make sure I never let my emotions lead me down this path again.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope, in time, you can forgive me. <3

the songs will take some time too be taken down so enjoy them while they are up.
also we are not related to the murder drone thing or previous hacks.