D4vd Started Making Music to Avoid Copyright Strikes on His Fortnite Videos — He Just Hit 1 Billion Spotify Streams with ‘Romantic Homicide’

Photo Credit: Spotify

An avid Fortnite player started making his own music to avoid copyright strikes on his gameplay videos. Now one of his songs has reached 1 billion Spotify streams.Last year, David Burke was a Fortnite player who made montage videos of his gameplay, but kept receiving copyright strikes for his use of other people’s music to soundtrack the videos. To solve this problem, the 18-year-old started creating his own music to use in his videos, releasing them under the name d4vd.

Fast forward to nine months later, and d4vd has over 25.1 million monthly Spotify listeners and a rapidly growing fanbase, thanks in no small part to his viral hit, “Romantic Homicide.” Now the song has reached the coveted 1 billion Spotify streams threshold, while Chartmetric data finds the track having been streamed over 43.3 million times on the platform in the past month alone.