THE CALIFORNIA-BASED REGGAE band Stick Figure has been around for 20 years, eight albums, and countless hours on the road, but lead vocalist and guitarist Scott Woodruff has never seen a track take off like “Angels Above Me” did this past week.
The seven-year-old song hit number one on the iTunes sales charts in six different countries, including the United Kingdom, Austria, and Canada, skyrocketing “out of nowhere,” according to Woodruff.
Stick Figure has had plenty of thrilling milestones before, with albums repeatedly hitting number one in the reggae category, and hit singles amassing hundreds of millions of streams. But the speed at which this track went from a years-old sleeper to a smash was new. People were posting TikToks about it, gushing with enthusiasm. “It was exciting,” Woodruff says. “But then once I found it was because of some version that was basically stolen and generated in one click, I mean, it’s saddening.”
Stick Figure is grappling with a thoroughly modern music business conundrum: It has a hit tune—but most of the plays and attention are on unauthorized, robotic remixes that the band and its team suspect have been spun up with the help of artificial intelligence tools. One remix amassed over 1.8 million plays on YouTube in five days. “Right now, four different versions are going viral,” says Woodruff. He’s getting royalties for none of them.
