Fresh off the heels of their debut album ‘Hush’, Ōtepoti five-piece IVY encountered a bump in the road during their album promotion. Early on the 20th of September, just eight days after the album drop, a new single appeared on their Spotify profile: DIE ALONE. To the dismay of their loyal audience, it wasn’t a Marvel post-credit scene situation, but a Spotify admin error.
Critic Te Ārohi had a yarn with IVY members Connor Cooper, James Axton, Jesse Hannan, Louis Stevenson and Ocean Temple-Wilson, to hear about the unfortunate mishap.
It was a simple mistake. The artist behind DIE ALONE is also called IVY (sticking with the all-caps theme). Local IVY’s album has been hailed by reviewers as a brooding and cinematic masterpiece; a perfect listen for a grey Dunedin day, parked at John Wilson Drive watching the waves crash, and the latest in a long line of music mastery born from the Dunedin Sound.
The Soundcloud rap felt a touch out of place. IVY told Critic that they “had a couple people send us DMs asking if it was part of a new sound for us, but most people kinda figured it wasn’t us”. Obviously a few listeners thought they were pushing their alternate sound to the max.
The boys didn’t rate the single as highly as their own album, which was the result of years of honing their craft in the local music scene. “We poured years of hard work and money into this album, poured our hearts into writing it,” they said. Asked to rate the tag-on song out of 10, they replied, “Soundcloud rap… would struggle to give it any more than a 3/10.” They humbly added that they reckoned their album rates “slightly higher” than a 3.
The error was reported to Spotify on Saturday and the song was taken down on Monday. It was a “pretty decent turn around” from Spotify, but IVY noted it was long enough for it to be seen and streamed by their entire audience. Comms, Culture and Events Specialist Maddie Koczanowski explained to Critic (really speedily, too) that mistaken songs sometimes appear as a result of a distributor error. “Distributors are the sole way to upload music to an artist profile. Sometimes, a distributor may upload music to an incorrect profile in error,” she said.
Luckily for Dunedinites, IVY is about to head on a national tour with fellow Ōtepoti band The Beatniks. The Beatniks and IVY will be stopping in Dunedin for gigs at Pearl Diver on the 3rd, 4th and 5th of October. Get in quick though – at the time of print tickets are only available for the 4th and 5th and most tickets have moved to the final release allocation. And, in the words of IVY, “if you want to feel something” you can stream their new album Hush on Spotify.