Inside a Spotify Artificial Streaming Report

Spotify has been cracking down on artificial streaming lately, in this video I walk you through an artificial streaming report from Spotify.

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[roweus]

What you described at the end is exactly what happened to me. Over the course of a year I repeatedly had to report bot playlists for adding one of my songs. End result? My song got removed and the playlists are still up and active and free to continue screwing over artists

[nottypebeats]

I've never been affected by any of this, but as far as I'm concerned it should be the bot accounts and playlists that are banned. If someone steals CDs from a store, the artist isn't threatened with being removed from shelves. If the allegation is that this was an indirect or direct action by the artist, that should be proven. Saying there is "no official appeals process" makes the distributor directly complicit, and a major part of the problem. I do, however, understand the difficulty of the situation. Unfortunate all around, really; and since Spotify spent years running at a loss to build a monopoly, it's hard to imagine they are likely to change for the better without major competition or pressure.

[kaysha]

I had that convo with my distributor after receiving a report/threat from Spotify about 14k streams. It made no sense to me since I make 200k streams per day and they told me that most times, it's botted playlists. And we agree that Spotify is punishing the wrong person. Remove the botted playlists and their creators.
Luckily, my distrib got my back

[sixtymilesdown]

Artists should have the option to go to any playlist that they’ve been added to and remove their song. In regards to Spotify, you should be able to go to your Spotify for artists account, go to the playlist that your song has been added to, and then given the option to remove the song and another option to remove and report the playlist. in my opinion if an artist gets booted from Spotify or whatever other streaming platform because they were added to a fraudulent playlist, they should be able to sue Spotify or whoever it was for removing them especially if they spent hundreds or thousands of dollars promoting a song on that platform when they had absolutely nothing to do with getting on that playlist and had no control of getting themselves off the playlist.

[snmtsu]

really cool to see the distributor's side of artificial streams, it makes you wonder exactly how spotify determines what is "artificial" or not

[DaGrimmOneOfficial]

One thing that never seems to amaze me is that, this stuff always happens to the smaller artists, I can put money on it wouldn’t happen to an artist like Taylor Swift, Drake etc. even if they did have artificial streams because of the amount of traffic that they would be bringing to their platform, also why is always Spotify in this situation? Apple, Amazon & Tidal seem to be fine but Spotify is the one all the time

[kanyiso]

Don't big artists do that and get away with it?

[Jakeb-Reel]

Whats bullshit tho is when youre using discovery mode, giving them 30% of those "artificial" streams and using Spotify's own ad platform to promote; some of us are getting absolutely ripped off by Spotify from multiple directions... something just doesn't add up.

[larsabi_]

So you could just bot a musician you don't like and he gets banned?

[SouhailEntertainment]

00:00:00 - Introduction: The Issue of Music Removal from Distributors
00:00:26 - Understanding Artificial Streaming and Its Consequences
00:00:54 - Types of Artificial Streaming: Bots and Artificial Human Streaming
00:01:21 - Consequences of Artificial Streaming on Spotify
00:01:47 - The Role of Distributors in Monitoring Artificial Streaming
00:02:17 - The Limitations and Challenges of Addressing Artificial Streaming
00:02:40 - Overview of the Artificial Streaming Report from Spotify
00:03:07 - Detailed Breakdown of the Artificial Streaming Report
00:03:39 - Example of Artificial Streaming Detection on an Artist’s Account
00:04:13 - How Distributors Use the Artificial Streaming Report
00:04:40 - Track Review List: Monitoring Potential Song Removals
00:05:11 - Misplaced Anger: The Role of Distributors vs. Streaming Platforms
00:05:39 - Understanding the Root of the Problem: Spotify's Role in Artificial Streaming
00:06:03 - Conclusion: Directing Anger Appropriately and Further Resources

[wonkyboymakesstuff]

So does the distributor I use matter in terms of my artist safety?

[TJ-vtrt]

This just happened to me. It was on an EP and they wouldn't tell me which song so I had to re-upload the whole thing.

I went through all of my stats and there was literally nothing that would give them cause to do this so how can this be ?

I showed Distrokid screen shots and they basically don't care.

[chaceurdreemz]

I’m fighting this rn with 3 eps i’ve had up for 8 years. It’s breaking my heart and it’s like screaming into a void. The CEO of Spotify is worth $4.8 billion. More than Taylor Swift. It’s all about scummy excuses to not pay smaller hardworking artists. Fuck spotify. Being a musician is already hard enough. We’re not even given the dignity of what should be a basic reliable platform for our work.

[LindaVeeSado]

Botted three times in as many months had an entire album pulled for 500 fake streams on the song. Get it reinstated and boom, two weeks later, same song botted again. So next thing I know I am fined twice for those two times. Then another song gets botted and now I am still in limbo waiting for my punishment for the third time. I did report the playlists, but they still don't care. And there was 9, 999 songs on each one. I doubt they get that number of people even buying streams in one week. However, it is not illegal to sell fake streams and why Spotify can't do anything. The only solution is to cut off all the free accounts because that is what they need to do it. But they won't because they are earning too much from the ads running on them and fining indies

[kpec]

This is the fault of the audience. People only stream music that they think other people like, which is popular. Very few people listen to music for its own merits. So artists have reacted to that by putting their songs on replay and/or buying fake streams. But the label artists were doing that ages ago. Music isn't popular unless it's already popular. You think that Ed Sheeran's next single is going to go through all the algorithmics until it graduates to Fresh Finds? See man, it's a sham. When Ed's next single drops, it STARTS on multiple editorials and there's going to be 100-300k streams on the first day. Even before the late 80s and Soundscan, charts didn't reflect sales, it was based on airplay and surveys and other rough estimates. Labels aren't innocent, Spotify enables THEM because they bribe Spotify, the label wants to protect its $2 million gamble on an Ed single.

[EFEROCIOUS]

i hate spotify wish their was other ways to get the music on there

[TangentMoon]

I wonder how many "artificial streams" come from free, ad-supported accounts.
Also Spotify could improve their image on this by showing us how many bots, botted playlists etc. they have removed. The only news we hear is from artists complaining when their catalogs get nuked from out of the blue.

[chasincash]

How do you avoid artificial streaming?

[gfxa]

I have a question. Does looping a Spotify curated playlist counts as artificial streaming?

[olikbot]

Hey Andrew, watched all of your videos, doing the ads successfully, but have one question : what do you think about using a discography playlist as destination page for the ads ? with the new release on top. and the alternative would be the same but with waterfall releases ? thank you <3