Hello listeners and welcome back to Underwood and Flinch. So at the time of my podcasting this episode, anyone who listens to the podcast at Spotify will know that I've had a bit of a bad time lately with the platform not only blocking my last episode, but also going on to block me from sharing any more episodes to the platform.

And I didn't even know why. They didn't contact me. They just blocked me.

So I did some digging into the matter and I found out from my podcast host that the problem

was caused by a third-party copyright dispute relating to my use of the music Ahmad Amma by Farid Farjad, which has been the

Underwood and Flinch theme tune since the show's first episode back in January 2009. I was able to use

the track then, you see, because the record company, Taranay Records, made it available for podcast

use via a site called Iota Promonet, which was one of a few sites dedicated to

providing record companies with the means to promote their music on the exciting new medium

of podcasting and podcasters like me with a source of music that we could play on our shows

without fear of any legal bother. However, that all went

out the window when I owed a promo net ceased to exist in 2013. And as soon as I copped onto that,

I stopped using Amadama. I told my then audience that I couldn't use it anymore and that Underwood

and Flinch was going to go musicless,

which was not met with, you know, much enthusiasm, I can tell you. But into the breach,

stepped listener and patron Farwa's Al-Maloud, who negotiated with Taranay Records on my behalf

and secured for me the rights to use the song on the Underwood and Flinch podcast,

and that got us another 10 years of Ahmad Amma, which was nice, so a big cheer for Fawars, please.

But now it seems that era has come to an end, because record companies register their music

with companies like Spotify

and YouTube and whatnot as being protected by their copyright. And now Spotify has started

automatically detecting copyrighted music as soon as it appears in a podcast on their platform

and blocks it. Ah, says you, this is simple.

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