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Playlists Being Falsely Reported!!!

Playlists Being Falsely Reported!!!

I've been put into an extremely frustrating situation that some of you may have also had problems with. Someone is falsely reporting my playlists, and there's nothing I can do about it. When someone reports your playlist, Spotify will automatically remove the playlist title, playlist bio, and playlist avatar, even if there is nothing that is breaking the rules of the user agreement policy. 

 

I run a rather large Indie/Alternative music blog, and my most recent Spotify playlist quickly gained traction and was starting to build a pretty decent sized following. However, I woke up two days after creating it to find that playlist title was blank and there was no bio. Thinking this was an error or glitch in the system, I changed it back. Not more than 30 minutes later, everything went blank again. After 5 more times of this happening, I contacted Spotify about this issue. They let me know that someone has been reporting my playlist for copyright. Well, I had no playlist picture, I was using the standard Spotify playlist art, the title was "Positive Energy Indie/Alternative Tunes" and there was absolutely nothing that would suggest a copyright issue. To fix this issue and get my playlist back, I had to file a counter-claim, and the user who flagged my playlist will have 10 days to respond. However, even if my playlist gets republished, that same user can report it again and I will be in this same issue all over again. Spotify also told me that it would be extremely hard to pinpoint the user that is falsely reporting my playlist, so there's pretty much nothing I can do about it.

 

As someone that depends on Spotify for my music blog and social media channels, I can not afford to have someone reporting my playlists just for the fun of it, whether that be for better SEO rankings or just because they don't like my channel. I do not wish this problem on anyone, and I think it is an absolutely terribly flawed system that can be abused way too often. There has to be a better reporting system on Spotify's end, or at least some greater protection for users that value Spotify's service and depend on it for their business. 

 

 

 

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131 Replies

I’d recommend reaching out to Spotify for more help with this. You can find some more info here on how to do this.

 

I hope this helps!

@chrismurray - As stated in the post, I have already reached out to Spotify. They told me that there is no way to prevent someone from falsely reporting playlists in the future, even if my counter-claims are successful. Very frustrating. 

Oh Sorry @30secondindie I must of mis-read when you mentioned about contacted support , I do agree its very fustrating, users shouldn't be reporting anyones playlists if there is nothing wrong with it in the first place, Spotify needs to address and sort this issue out.

I am having exactly the same issue! I run a playlist for 5 YEARS, never had a problem, and i have a large number of followers, and now ive seen that people are copying the name of my playlist and maybe those same people are falsely reporting it just so they can be on top of the search algorithm. I have sent several emails about this to spotify, they have said to me that everything is alright with my playlist and i have the rights to post all of the content, but still, some one or some people are randomly reporting it and they just remove the name and thumbnail WITHOUT any verification of any trueness or reason for that same report. I have been putting my thumbnail and name of playlist ALL DAY LONG today because of this REPORT SPAMM. I hope Spotify actually start digging into the reports BEFORE they automatticly REMOVE everything from the playlist without any investigation.. Its not fair for people who have had alot of time and work put on a playlist to someone just easily shut it down like that. 

Please let me know if you have any fix for your problem as i am experience exactly the same. 

@martimsf I feel your pain. I don't have enough time to sit around and change back the information all day long. My followers probably think I'm losing my mind seeing the playlist information switching back and forth like that. When I spoke to Spotify customer service about the issue, even they agreed that this is a flawed area of the reporting system. Even then, I asked them if it was possible to punish, or at least find out who is behind the abusive reporting, and they said that it would be "extremely difficult to pinpoint the user." 

From what I'm finding out through researching this issue, this is becoming an increasingly common thing only recently. So this must be a dirty tactic that people with similar playlists are executing, or it's just a random person trying to simply annoy the playlist owner. 

 

Regardless, it's quite concerning it is that EASY to do this to someone's content, and should definitely be grounds for account suspension for those that are doing this. 

This keeps going on! So now its just like a Cat and Mouse game, which they report me and i put back in the name and thumbnail, and right after the same happens again, and this goes on a vicious cicle.. Spotify wont even dignify themselves to reply to my emails anymore.. 

I dont know what is saddest, this people that have nothing better to do with their meaningless lives or this awfull system spotify offers to their costumers. 

I'm gonna change after 5 years of premium to another platfrom since they dont really care about their costumers

BUMP! Please do something about this ! This has been going on for too long and its unacceptable that this system can be so easily abused ! I have lost over hundred of followers (which is not even really my main concern) its just so annoying to have to write down every single day more than 5 times per day the name of MY playlist back and the thumbnail.. Just so anyone can go and report for fun or whatever reason might be. 

BUMP. Please fix this policy it is horrid. I have been dealing with the same issue for a week now. Have had the playlist for 5 years now and it only started after my playlist reached 10k+ followers. 

BUMP!!! This is terrible and has been happening to my playlist of 120K for the past 36 hours. Someone is trying to steal the SEO with absolutely zero grounds for reporting. SPOTIFY YOU HAVE TO FIX THIS!!!

I replied to another one of your posts on this issue. Just wanted to reiterate, I have the same issue. People have made a carbon copy of my playlist and took mine down to divert attention to theirs. I contacted support and after months of slow communication I finally spoke with the Executive Support team. A year later, and I still haven't received any conclusive resolutions. 

 

 

You're not alone, I have the same problem.

My Playlist has some really good SEO rankings and since two weeks someone is reporting them over and over.

The first time Spotify answered my mail and claimed to have a look at the problem.

Now the support does not even answer my mail.

It is extremly frustrating as I put lots of effort in my playlists and some random user can report it for no reason so it's taken down.

This is really user / curator unfriendly!

Spotify, you need to improve the reporting playlist if you do not want to loose the great number of users that spend their freetime to curate great playlists for all Spotify Users!

This has been happening to one of my playlists for the past 3 months. It's very stressful. I'm sure who's been reporting my playlist. They have a similar playlist but with random songs of unknown artists that has nothing to do with the show. (context: I curate soundtracks for TV shows) I'm assuming they get paid to add those artists to their playlists. Spotify's report system is really flawed. I'm thinking of moving to a different streaming platform because the stress isn't worth it.

Hey there folks!

 

Thanks for reporting this to us and we're sorry to hear that this has been happening to you.

 

We have a live idea about this here and we suggest leaving a +Vote to support the idea.

 

If you're interested in how ideas work and how your feedback reaches the right teams here, check this page out.
 
Let us know if there's anything else we can do for you. We'd be happy to help.

ElenaModerator
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BUMP. This is happening to me too, for two weeks now. I'm outraged I can't get any help from Spotify. What a disservice to its users to not investigate these reports BEFORE removing all our hard work... ruining a popular playlist, and for what. I've emailed a million customer service reps at this point, no help, tried contacting Spotify Chat, they told me that the only way to get help would be to reply to the emails. So they sent me on a loop of no help and no solution.

Really can't believe there aren't any rules in place to protect us, and don't have much hope since this idea is months old, but this would really help. I have even found the user who has copied my playlist title, plus you have their freaking email addresses, I don't see how it's hard to track down the people who are harassing us users with these reports. So disappointing that Spotify isn't helping.

There needs to be a checks and balance of false abusive reporting behavior, my playlist recently got targeted with this nonsense and its quite annoying.  There needs to be a checks and balances measure at spotify to weed out these false claims - does anyone know if the same user can issue multiple reports for the same reasoning, meaning can one user target my playlist and constantly report it, or do they need to have a separate user account in order to do so? 

 

My playlist in question was created literally 10 years ago and has operated just fine, and now as of yesterday, is constantly flagged  - for no reason whatsover.  Spotify keeps analytics and records on every users moves throughout the year, why can't they identify suspicious reporting - and apply a "human touch" to verify the claims are meritless?

 

 

did you ever get any resolution on this? One of my playlists is getting targeted i believe right now, and i've received about 6 or 7 notices in the past 12 hours - all without merit of course, and i replied to support but from reading these boards, i am not confident they have grasped the problem yet.

 

 

No fix yet, still happens to me all the time. I gave up having a cover art and playlist description because it takes too long to add it back every time.

can the same user report the same playlist multiple times, or is the belief that each false report is a separate account?

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