Feb. 20, 2026 // PRESS RELEASE // GULFF v. Spotify
Feb. 17, 2026 // PR // GULFF “error”
February 21, 2026 — Do not pardon the interruption: There’s nothing unusual about hearing an ad while streaming music on Spotify, but in listening to GULFF's debut single "error," the ad around the midpoint isn’t being served up by Spotify's algorithm. The band wrote it and cut it into their textural new track themselves.
If independent artists doesn’t release their music on Spotify, they may miss the opportunity to reach the platform’s 696 million users. The platform controls roughly a third of all music streaming worldwide and 37% of the U.S. streaming market. It profits upwards of $1 billion per year, but for the last two years, it has by policy demonetized any track with fewer than 1,000 streams per year, zeroing out royalties for the artists of over 175 million songs. While it pays many of its artists nothing and others next to nothing, it runs its own ads against their music on its free tier.
GULFF’s deadpan ad in its song made both because of and against big tech is commentary on this deal with the devil. The “ad as sample” fits perfectly into the oeuvre of this transatlantic collaboration between Tod Lippy, an artist and editor in Brooklyn, and Owain Kelly, an electronic musician and composer in Manchester. The duo began collaborating as the U.S. entered a period in which arts funding is being eliminated, and the project’s name was inspired by the brief period of absurdity when the Gulf of Mexico was officially renamed “the Gulf of America.” The pair have never met in person and have vowed they never will.
The forthcoming self-titled LP — which early listeners say balances the extremes, “pristine” and “damaged,” in a way that is “authentic and cathartic,” full of “heart and power” — runs 39 minutes and is built from samples including robocalls, phone-phreaking tones, and audio from a Meta-hosted demo of a cooking class led by an AI instructor — the soundscape of late capitalism.
"error" is available February 20 on all platforms, including gulffonline.com and Bandcamp, with an accompanying video cut entirely from stock footage of the first known internet advertisement — assembled, distorted and re-recorded through progressive eras of visual playback technology — on YouTube. The embedded ad is intercut only into the Spotify version.
For press inquiries Fifer Burman • [email protected]
Listen at gulffonline.com • Bandcamp • Streaming Platforms