TRAPPO IS CANCELED

 

Earlier today, Spotify suspended my account, taking every episode of TRAPPO offline. Why? Because this year's Christmas episode, The 2024 Holiday Hit Parade, was flagged for a content ID violation. If you're not aware, the episode was a parody of a standard radio countdown show, hosted by a pair of exhausted degenerates who have no business on the air. The episode used complete songs throughout the duration, including "Ho Ho Ho" from Sia and "Christmas Tree Farm" from Taylor Swift, but the characters, being inept as well as terminally jaded, tend to audibly talk over a lot of the music, unaware that their fictional radio audience can hear their candid conversations. It's a running joke with this KTRP series. But Spotify flagged the pair of songs on the 27th, and I was informed via email that if I didn't re-edit and re-upload the episode, removing the offending content, by December 30, that the episode would be removed from the platform. I had a re-edited episode ready to go, but since this is an incredibly hectic time of year, I just forgot to upload it over the past few days. 

This afternoon, I received an email informing me that the "offending content" had been removed pending an appeal that I hadn't yet filed. I guess Spotify just arbitrarily decided that the "offending content" in question wasn't the single episode that they had flagged, but the entire fucking podcast, so it's all gone now, and my account is suspended. If you visit any of the Spotify links on this blog, you won't find TRAPPO. You'll instead see an error page, because as of now, TRAPPO doesn't exist according to the Spotify overlords. 

I'm not saying Spotify is wrong in wanting me to re-edit the Holiday Hit Parade. I would argue Fair Use in this case, since it's essentially one big parody, but I wouldn't fight that issue with a lot of enthusiasm, since it may not be the strongest argument to begin with, hence why I had a re-edited version of the episode ready to go. I would enthusiastically argue that every other episode of TRAPPO falls under Fair Use, since the podcast is at its core a form of pop culture criticism, therefore removing the entire show from their servers is absolute bullshit, and I told Spotify as much in my appeal, which is yet to be addressed as I type these words. 

To be candid, this has been a bit of a rough year for me. I'm dealing with a seemingly never-ending series of medical woes with no end in sight, which is really beginning to take its toll on my mental state. These past two months in particular have been a real struggle for me, and I was incredibly proud of myself for managing to get these last few episodes of the show edited and released during this incredibly busy month of December. And at least for now, three and a half years of my life have been erased from the internet by an uncaring corporation. 

I'm not delusional. Spotify offers free unlimited hosting for podcasts, which no other service does. They don't owe me anything. It's their platform, and if they decide that TRAPPO doesn't belong on their platform, there's nothing I can do about this. And for the time being, Spotify has decided exactly that, so I'm left with no real options regarding TRAPPO's future. If Spotify doesn't re-instate the podcast in the next week, they never will. And not enough people listen to TRAPPO for me to justify paying a monthly fee for any other podcast platform to host the show. I'm not going to burn at least fifteen bucks each month so that seven random people can listen to my scintillating thoughts on Alien: Romulus. 

Even if Spotify allows TRAPPO to continue existing on their platform, I'm not sure I even care at the moment. The events of the past month have just about hollowed me out, and suspending TRAPPO was the perfect little gift to really wrap up this absolute reeking shit heap of a year. So either way, TRAPPO's done, at least for now. If Spotify restores my account, I'll re-upload the Holiday Hit Parade and fix any broken links on the blog, but there won't be any new episodes of TRAPPO for a while. And if Spotify doesn't restore my account, I think that's the end of the line. I can't start over again. I can't afford to pay for anybody to host this dumb podcast. Nobody else cares, so why should I? I might re-upload some episodes someplace else in the future, just to maintain an archive for the handful of people out there who might actually want to listen to the show, but that's pretty much it for now. 

I'm not writing this to garner sympathy for anybody. This isn't the precursor to some ill-fated crowd-funding campaign to "save TRAPPO". I don't want your pity. I'm just fucking angry and exhausted, and I feel like the theoretical audience that actually follows this blog might want to know what's going on. So now you know. Even if a miracle occurs and Spotify un-cancels TRAPPO, don't expect anything new from this podcast for a while. Otherwise, this is probably goodbye. I'm done. This is all my fault because I chose to include complete songs in the Holiday Hit Parade. If I'd just been a little smarter, none of this would've happened. I fucked up, and I only have myself to blame. 

But fuck Spotify, anyway. And fuck everything else, while I'm at it.  

TRAPPO is canceled. And the world shrugs.