Soundcloud, Spotify, YouTube April Fool’s Pranks

The internet loves April Fool’s Day. TechCrunch has compiled a master list of pranks, and they’ve even created a few of their own, like TC Euro’s blast on Spotify.

Quite like Slate’s fake Mick Jagger letter to Keith Richards, which showed there’s truth behind every joke, Tech Crunch’s Paul Carr says Spotify will halt its UK operations in order to focus on a U.S. launch. In a fake letter to European users, company founder Daniel Ek says, “America has always been the most important and lucrative market for web services, and so the decision to close down our European operations to fund a US launch was, frankly, a no-brainer.”

Meanwhile, over at fellow Euro music start-up Soundcloud, the jokes on users. In a post on the company blog, Soundcloud informs users that the “much-requested feature” of adding background images to profile pages has finally been released. Being a good sport, Seattle’s Sub Pop Records has fitted out their profile with animated emoticons that make it nearly impossible to listen to music on the page.

At YouTube, it’s 1911. Videos like Katy Perry featuring Kanye West’s “E.T.” have been slapped with the old-timey stick. The Floria Sigismondi-directed music video’s intro has been dubbed with Midge Williams’ And Her Jazz Jesters’ “Where In The World” before Kanye raps “I got a dirty mind” over a very 2011 Dr. Luke beat.