Since Aaliyah’s untimely death back in 2001, fans have been consuming her music as much as when she was alive, with countless artists citing her as an invaluable influence on their music. However, her music’s availability on digital platforms like iTunes has long been a contentious issue, with some rather intriguing developments occurring recently.
As Complex reported on January 12th, Aaliyah’s greatest hits compilation Ultimate was available for sale on iTunes. As they reported, the main reason for her music being unavailable stems back to her uncle, Barry Hankerson, who also started her record label and kickstarted her career.
In 2013, Craze Productions apparently uploaded many of Aaliyah’s songs onto iTunes despite the pesky legal snag of not actually owning the rights to them. However, after a small legal battle, the songs were removed, and Aaliyah’s music went back to being inaccessible online.
But now on January 13th of this year, 24 hours after Ultimate was released online, the tracks were yet again taken down. The most confounding aspect of this however, is the fact that the songs that were uploaded on January 12th actually listed Craze Productions as the copyright holder of the songs.
While no response from Craze Productions, Apple, or the actual owners of Aaliyah’s music has been put forward, it raises many questions about the process of how the music was uploaded online, and whether or not we will ever actually see Aaliyah’s music available for download.
