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Fans of The Weeknd received an early surprise for the holidays—until the artist confirmed the “Trust Issues” remix appearing on Spotify was unauthorized.
On December 18, a remix of the track “Trust Issues” appeared on The Weeknd’s Spotify artist page. The remix first appeared online over 12 years ago, but never on any streaming service. Fans who were excited to see the track were then heartbroken when Abel Tesfaye took to Twitter to say the release was unauthorized by reposting a tweet by someone else.
“Trust Issues is NOT an official release! The Weeknd’s Spotify account was hacked and the hacker released the song, “Trust Issues.” the tweet reads. Eagle-eyed fans peeped the metadata available to Spotify and quickly realized the track was unauthorized.
The label it was released under is listed as ‘the weeknd’ with no writer or producer listed for the track. It was also released under the same title as the original Drake song, without the remix label—and was not available on any other streaming platform.
As of December 19, the song is no longer available for listening on Spotify. The original remix video is still available on YouTube, however.
As the third-most streamed artist on Spotify that’s a bit disappointing for fans, but The Weeknd has had a banger of a year. He racked up over 12 billion streams on Spotify from 285.2 million fans. The biggest accomplishment of all is those numbers without a new album release. Only Taylor Swift and Drake have more monthly listeners, but both of those artists released albums in 2023.
The Weeknd concluded his European leg of his “After Hours Till Dawn” this year, setting a new records in the process. He broke the attendance record for London Stadium with a crowd of over 80,000 people watching.
With the conclusion of his European leg, the total gross broke the record for highest-grossing tour by a black artist in the history of the continent. He brought in $158.1 million across just 30 shows, with 1.6 million tickets sold. That’s impressive when you remember both Taylor Swift and Beyonce were touring this year, too.
