Get the latest tech news

Rescuing songs that record labels forgot existed

Thousands of songs are still unavailable on streaming services. Rob Johnson wants to change that.

Over the last six years, he’s been responsible for 725 releases, including tracks by Sting, Cher and Annie Lennox, with a strong bias for late 90s pop acts such as Billie Piper, S Club and A*Teens. His first single, I Breathe Again, was a massive hit, thanks mainly to a video where he appears completely in the buff, but when subsequent songs missed the top 10, both Polydor and Rickitt lost interest. For a long time, NSync’s single Girlfriend was “greyed out” on Spotify – with the label apparently unaware that the freely-available album version wasn’t the same as the hit remix with Nelly and the Neptunes.

Get the Android app