Fat Tony Assault Plea, Studio Lam Closing & Remix Row
Fat Tony assault case: Fat Tony assault guilty plea, Studio Lam closes, Chainsmokers' unauthorised remix, and Spotify data scrape dominate this week's
Estimated reading time: 3 min
Violence, Acquisitions, and a Bangkok Goodbye
Dubai-based FIVE Holdings is acquiring Brooklyn's Avant Gardner complex, including the Brooklyn Mirage outdoor venue, with plans to rebrand the entire site as Pacha New York. The deal extends Pacha's global footprint into the US large-scale venue market, raising questions about independent nightlife infrastructure as brand consolidation accelerates. (Original source)
Elsewhere, Bangkok's Studio Lam—a 12-year hub for underground and global sounds—will close February 28, with founder Maft Sai and the venue's house funk band headlining the final night. (Man pleads guilty to assaulting Fat Tony in 2024 nightclub incident) A man has pleaded guilty to grievous bodily harm after assaulting Fat Tony during a December 2024 set in Margate, leaving the DJ hospitalised with a broken eye socket.
Liverpool rapper EsDeeKid accused The Chainsmokers of uploading an unauthorised remix of his track "4 Raws" to official DSP profiles, while activist group Anna's Archive claims to have scraped 86 million audio files and over 250 million metadata rows from Spotify, prompting an internal investigation. (Original source)
Spotify Scraped, EsDeeKid Calls Out Chainsmokers
The Spotify scrape and unauthorised remix controversy expose friction between platform-scale infrastructure and artist control. Anna's Archive—an activist data project—says it captured both audio files and metadata, raising questions about Spotify's internal catalog architecture and access-control protocols. The streaming service confirmed an investigation but disclosed no timeline or remediation steps.
EsDeeKid's complaint centers on commercial distribution rather than informal remix culture. The Chainsmokers posted their rework of "4 Raws" to official DSP profiles, bypassing clearance. (Man pleads guilty to assaulting Fat Tony in 2024 nightclub incident) His public statement—"Please don't remix my shit and think it's cool to post to all DSPs"—reframes the debate: not whether remixing happens, but who profits and under whose name. Both incidents highlight how digital music's open surface masks brittle permissions layers underneath.
What the Week Says About Power
Read together, the week's stories map power asymmetries across every layer of the electronic music economy. FIVE Holdings now controls Brooklyn's largest outdoor complex, extending a Dubai-based conglomerate into prime North American real estate. Meanwhile, Studio Lam—Bangkok's underground anchor for a decade—shuts down without a buyer, its final night anchored by resident talent rather than imported headliners. (Original source) The same tension surfaces in creator disputes. EsDeeKid's objection wasn't to remix culture itself but to The Chainsmokers monetising his work through official channels without clearance. Anna's Archive's claim to have captured internal Spotify architecture—86 million files, 250 million metadata rows—exposes how platform centralisation creates exploitable single points of failure. (Man pleads guilty to assaulting Fat Tony in 2024 nightclub incident)
Sources
How we reported this
We reviewed the original coverage from RANews and cross-checked key details against the sources above. If something is unclear or changes after publication, we’ll update this post.
About the author
Tom Rander — Tom Rander is a journalist and electronic music specialist who has spent years documenting the intersection of club culture and technical innovation. With a background rooted in both the booth and the press room, Tom founded Rander.io to provide a more rigorous, expertise-driven alternative to mainstream music blogs.
