Can anyone solve this Garth Brooks streaming mystery?
No one other than The Beatles has sold more records than Garth Brooks. But even as The Beatles embraced streaming, Brooks largely refuses to play that game. Want his music? Then buy the record. Want to stream his music? Amazon Music is the only place to go. He will have nothing to do with Spotify. Or Apple Music, for that matter.
But reader Mark has pointed something out.
“Just wondering if you might know if Brooks Jefferson really Garth Brooks. I listen to Spotify quite often and like Garth Brooks’ music but there is nothing on Spotify for Garth Brooks just a couple of live tracks. But type in a title for one of his songs and you get Brooks Jefferson. If he is not him, he does a real good copy of him. Hope you can help.”
Interesting. Is Brooks pulling another Chris Gaines by launching a new alter-ego? Or is this a case of someone ripping him off?
Spotify has a problem whereby people are posting music by well-known artists under fake names–names that they’ve registered to themselves. This allows them to siphon off royalties away from the legitimate artist to themselves. For example, I found this issue with Van Morrison.
Can anyone shed light on what’s happening here?
I just listened to a couple of the Brooks Jefferson songs, and while they sound a lot like Garth Brooks, they definitely aren’t Garth Brooks. Good covers, but not the original (unless Garth re-recorded with a slightly different sound).
I would say that they are just good covers, nothing more.