My Spotify got fake streams... here's what I did.

In this video, I walk you through identifying the source of fake streams inside of Spotify for Artists and how you can do some detective work yourself.

My Spotify got fake streams, and I don't know where they originated from. Follow me as I do the detective work to discover where the bot streams came from and who sent them. This is meant to help you understand your own Spotify analytics so you can look for any suspicious trends in your charts. Then I go into what I did to stop them (spoiler alert... the only way to beat fake streams is to make sure you market with real listeners). If you need to grow your audience with real listeners, check out the links below to view ways we can work together on your music!

*Ways We Can Work Together:*

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*This video is about:*

#musicmarketing #spotifyplaylist #musicpromotion #spotifyeditorial #spotifycharts #spotifymarketing #spotify

[IndieMusicAcademy]

*Have you ever received bot streams on your music against your will?* 😭 *Share your story with me in the comments below* 🙌

[Neosentient-fmuw]

I had one of these fake spikes from a company called Artister. I reported these fake streams to Spotify and wanted them removed, in which they told me to report the playlist, which I did, and they told me they would take care of everything… my music was removed from Spotify… I did nothing wrong and my music was removed from Spotify. Meanwhile, Artister is still allowed to be on Spotify… So obviously something much bigger is going on. It is obvious that Spotify has struck a deal with record companies because they need these bottled playlists to pad their numbers so that they can get on billboard, etc. And it’s obvious that smaller artists are being thrown under the bus to make it look like they are trying to “stop” it…. You need to do a video about how this is happening to thousands of artists… but I have a feeling that you’re probably owned as well, and could never do such an honest video. Prove me wrong. Thank you..

[PatrickDeVille-oyms]

Spotify will eventually get in trouble for penalizing the artist. Artists can't control who plays their songs. It is the playlists that do it. Spotify needs to take them to court. Time to get real.

[Maddymadd]

My spikes came from playlist that i never added my music to and they still deleted my music

[wavestoronto]

This is starting to get out of hand. Andrew southworth was talking about it in the GS forums. So many people are being added to botted playlist with streams from finland.

[prodbytallye]

Don’t worry about it?? What?!?!? My music got 1000 streams from a unknown bot playlist and it’s already been taken down

[SVBSTXNCEABVSE]

This has happened to me. I don't know what to do. I feel pretty powerless to do anything. Tried explaining my situation to distrokid and Spotify, but they don't believe me and insist that I've knowingly used artificial streaming. I'm hoping my music/account doesn't get taken down.

[jorgaridya]

My lastest song was placed without my concent on a bunch of "fake" Spotify playlist. About 2 weeks later I got a Spotify take down notification. Then Distrokid wanted me to sign a document basically admitting I did pay for a promo and that I will never do it again. There's no way to prevent this assholes to put your music on playlist.

[streamondistro]

It happens but then Spotify penalises the artist and flags them with artificial streaming

[HandHeldHalo]

This just happened to my latest single which was added along with 99 completely different new songs to a playlist created 3-days ago that is generating 1000's of streams a day in Finland from a couple of fake listeners (click-farm). Sadly it's not just a blip like yours as it's happened everyday since the playlist was created. They've even botted the followers up to 66k in 1-day. What I don't understand is how Spotify's algorithms can't see these botted playlists because the people creating them are not being very covert.. it's blatant! It's driving me mad as Spotify say they can't do anything and my Distributor is helpless. Spotify won't stop the playlister but they'll ban the Artist.. it's gone mad!!! 🤯 If anyone knows how to get a song off these botted playlists, I would be eternally grateful! 🙏

[AlexSonicsMusic]

Is everyone affected distributed by distrokid?

[EtherealDawnOfficial]

I made a mistake to trust a playlist promotion which had 4.9 of 5 stars in reviews. 1000+ positive reviews.

Now i get some notification of fake streams.

First ever promotion i done.
Really hope the distrubitor/spotify can overlook that mistake.
I don't understand why they put the blame on the artist and not the scammer.
That scammer is still up and running, earning ALOT and fucking the musicians over and over..
Disgusting situation..

[lorettaashton]

Spotify removed all of my husband's songs, saying that they were added to botted playlists. This was done without our permission.
Tunecore stole all the royalties after I reported a problem.
Independent artists are being penalized while Spotify does nothing to the botted Playlist. Independent artists should be protected from this happening.
We worked hard to get real fans and had nothing to do with adding songs to these playlists.
It seems to be a way to get rid of independent artists that are not signed with a lable.
I hope that Spotify loses all of it's customers...
Very sad...

[Spectoral_on_SPOTIFY]

Can u pls make a video addressing how to remove your song from a botted playlist you don't own that has no contact details on it? The community forum at spotify recommended I contact Artist Support directly, so I did. They replied "it is not possible to manually remove your track from a third party playlist" and then told me to try reporting it as a legal IP infringement form to their content moderation team, which is a total joke. I did this anyway, but of course the reported infringement was denied. Am I stuck forever on this playlist now?

[noctemvulpes]

I am kinda happy to hear, that I am not the only one with this issue. This happened to me and my album was taken down.

Maybe we indie musicians should stop promoting Spotify and use platforms like YouTube, Bandcamp etc more

[obzocrc]

they removed my track today due to ''bot farm playlist'' i never used shit, a lot ppl got same issue. ofc small artists. never big.

[ThomasTornevall]

I just ended up here for this reason. Weird thing, when I followed the tracks like you did here, I saw a lot of plays from UK. Not sure why though. Checking statistics on soundcloud it was a bit more spreaded over the worlds, so I guess your bot-theory could work in this for me.

[ericeracleous]

This exact thing happened to me. But because of that blip my followers also doubled from 44 to 86. Though i searched to find the source of the blip i still have those supposed extra followers. They havent gone away. Question is if the 300 or so views vanished overnight then how come i still maintain these extra followers and are they real? Because im sure not getting any extra streams than i got from before the blip.

[rig]

Thank you for the help, I almost lost my mind because of it, I was literrally thinking I would be banned because of that, but you just calm down my mind, preciate it.

[lowergroundband]

I’m on day 4 of being on this “Lemon Pop” playlist. I’ve gained 1700 streams on this song per day, and it was only at 3000 before this. Also each time I check the playlist from Spotify for Artists, my song isn’t even on it, yet it still updates with new plays from the playlist each day. It’s based in Helsinki of course