“She Has Me Clocked”: The Bizarre Story Of How A Sydney Artist’s Identity (And Music) Was Stolen
Donatachi, meet Danatachi.
Sydney producer and bubblegum-pop hero Donatachi is on a bit of a roll at the moment: he’s just supported Kim Petras on her mini Australian tour, signed to electronic label etcetc and last week dropped ‘Do What I Want’, a super sweet pride anthem. Clearly, someone else has noticed he’s on the rise, as they’re trying to steal his identity and music by posing online as “Danatachi”.
In case you don’t know, Donatachi is part of Sydney’s Sidechains collective, a group of producers and DJs connected in style and sound to the world of A.G. Cook and PC Music.
Donatachi’s all things sugar and spice across his own releases, collabs with Mallrat, remixes, or his hyper-internet and pastel-pink Instagram aesthetic, which he describes as a “Princess Peach x Sanrio [Hello Kitty’s creators] stan”. And now, Danatachi’s serving up an equally saccharine, eerily ‘familiar’ sound and look.
Yesterday, Donatachi was contacted by an American music promoter saying they had discovered a new producer — Danatachi — and had begun to promote them in playlists and online before realising things weren’t quite as it seems. The same day he released it, ‘Do What I Want’ had been re-uploaded to Danatachi’s Soundcloud and Bandcamp as ‘Cry Baby’. That itself isn’t that strange: it’s a bit of a scam to gain (minuscule) money through Bandcamp, and Donatachi has had it happen before with his song ‘In Love’ last year.
What is weird is the efforts that Danatachi went to present herself as a real person. The promoter who emailed Donatachi let him know about Danatachi’s Instagram, which only has a hundred or so followers, and as of writing, thirteen posts. Many are selfies, and very much aligned within Donatachi’s candy-floss world, even down to the captions.
“The aesthetic thing is kind of funny to me,” he tells Music Junkee. “Like it’s a parody, almost: the “part time Disney princess part time performer” Instagram caption had me like, “ok, she has my number. She has me clocked.”
Three Instagram posts from ‘Danatachi’, who attempted to pass of Donatachi’s music as their own.
A little bit of picture research shows that ‘Danatachi’ is actually LA-based model Riley Vial — every picture here is taken from her Instagram. “I guess it’s a catfish on multiple levels?” he says. “I’d like to be flattered by the ‘copying’ of my music but trying to make money off it with Bandcamp is so weird. I don’t even make money off my music, lol.”
Weirder yet, Danatachi has positioned herself as the song’s singer — who is actually Melbourne’s Evangeline — and tagged @hugacuteboy as the song’s producer, which, you guessed it, is another seemingly fake account.
Hug A Cute Boy — who positions herself as a teen girl with braces — has three Instagram posts, and has one song on their Soundcloud, ‘Boopz feat. Zack Ford’.
Shazam tells us ‘Boopz’ is actually by ‘Don’t Wanna’ by a group called TV Room with 87 monthly Spotify listeners, and no easily traceable online presence. Zack Ford, Hug A Cute Boy’s supposed vocalist, is apparently from “Eleventh Hour Child”, though Shazam says all three of their Soundcloud songs are by Newcastle artist Skyepaint. And the previous Soundcloud account, MTR SHWR, who ripped ‘In Love’ from Donatachi last year has now stolen ‘I Got That Boom’ from US rapper Kitty’s group The Pom Poms, renaming it ‘Boom’.
It’s a bit of a rabbit hole, to say the least. Whoever it is, they seemingly pull songs from small artists, hoping they’ll never notice, perhaps underestimating Donatachi’s size — and fan base.
donatachi vs dana tachi pic.twitter.com/BTIZxFFMng
— ✧･ﾟ:･*donatachi*:･･ﾟ✧ (@donatachimusic) March 26, 2019
Danatachi has removed ‘Cry Baby’ from Soundcloud after Donatachi’s fans (“Twitter gays”) began to leave Instagram comments demanding she delete it.
But he’s already discovered another Soundcloud account “Dana Tachi”, which seven months ago uploaded three of his previous songs and remixes under different names. This account links to more accounts, which link to more accounts.
“It’s like a Soundcloud bling ring,” Donatachi says. “What does she hope to gain from this?”
We’ve contacted Soundcloud for information on how they try to attempt to target stolen music, though with fake social media profiles behind every other account, they’ve got their work cut out for them. They currently have a form artists can fill out if they believe their copyright has been infringed or songs have been stolen.
Then again, maybe Danatachi will release original music: just today, she’s posted a gram promising “massive plans music-wise”, including a mix, EP, and a new single… on April Fools Day. Donatachi has no plans to drop any of the above, so she might be pulling from someone else. Still, he has to admire the scam.
“I mean I will be even more embarrassed if her EP drops before mine,” he says. “[We] stan dana tachi!”
Stream the real Donatachi’s latest single ‘Do What I Want’ feat. Evangeline, below.
Jared Richards is a staff writer at Junkee, and Alexis Neiers can call him anytime. Follow him on Twitter.