Fake or Bot accounts spamming my Release Radar

[tobbetto]

Plan

Premium

Country

Spain

Device

Samsung Galaxy

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

I have weird artists showing up on my Release Radar that are "Verified artists" that tag some of the bands I am following to show up on it. The weird thing is that you can't block these artists. Examples include the "artists" Yungeen (spotify:artist:0YPeAUzlCTvVWfpYHWC5Om) and "Weidd (spotify:artist:1brUyeMPhOFq9hGBPexLl2)"

I have up to 5 songs from these artist spamming my Release Radar. ¿Are these Spotify Bots?

[AlejaR]

Hey @tobbetto,

Thanks for posting in the Community and welcome. 

In this case, we'd like to add some insights. Keep in mind that the feature to block artists is only available at the moment on Android and iOS devices; that's why you can see the option from the desktop app.

That being said, you should be able to block the artists' content in the mobile app version. We noticed the Yungeen artist profile is not showing properly on the mobile app version, and we'd like you to know we reported that behavior to the right team. So, we'd suggest you go to the artist profiles of all the artists whose content you'd like to block from a mobile device.

If you notice some inconveniences trying to block other artists, please let us know, and we'll pass the info onto the right folks so they can check what's happening.

Lastly, if you feel one or more artists are taking advantage of or tagging other popular artists in their tracks that don't appear in the songs, you can also follow these steps to report the content on the support site.

Keep us in the loop!

[OscarDC]

Hey folks,

Thank you for your patience.

We received confirmation from the relevant team that the issue was resolved in the latest update, and the 3-dot menu is again visible for those artists. If you still have this issue, we'd recommend updating your app to its latest version.

If anything else comes up, don't hesitate to ask. 

[BR32]

This is getting beyond ridiculous! Poor Hilary Duff seems to be getting all the hate on my release radar recently. 

Artists that I'm having issues with just TODAY: 

Lorii moore - https://open.spotify.com/artist/2eE0rQvIy5x5VFlCdrcZVF?si=BAzYPoa-TXy34J9_YpgHOA

Noonyee - https://open.spotify.com/artist/5dGJw1KjPkQ6GmiDn3JJdl?si=dg4OB4a2QxS--J1KsQK3iQ

Sevenoceansdeep - https://open.spotify.com/artist/4pif02dit8mndewOxdPbGA?si=2LM10unpQZmgwlSwqoWAHA

Weidd - https://open.spotify.com/artist/1brUyeMPhOFq9hGBPexLl2?si=0yaA0Pe9Sf-nZm1iKsb2FQ

Spotify PLEASE DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS.

[Bryneth]

I recognise both those artists ('Yungeen' and 'Weidd'). In the past I've reported songs they've posted which falsely claim they feature other artists. All that happens is that Spotify removes the additional artists from the song, or in some cases the song itself, and leaves the scam artist free to repeat the process. I can't imagine Spotify is making any money from these scammers, so it just seems to be incompetence.

[sssethhh]

at this point there is no relevant way to report these spam/bot artist accounts when they include legit artists in their features or song credits. when you try to report this issue, the only choices you have in the What are you reporting? drop-down are "artist bio text,"  "artist pick text," "artist profile image," "artist banner image," or "artist merchandise." we need a spam option here so that these accounts get flagged and reviewed for including false info about other artists.

[sssethhh]

This is still an ongoing issue to this day. I still have multiple scam/fake artists in my Release Radar playlist. This week I'm even seeing artists spamming using well-known artists' monikers. I was surprised to see a new single from Wilco titled, "als ik jou vergeef" and when you play this track its very obviously not Wilco, and is instead some Dutch group. I'm seeing fake tracks from artists with only one track. Many of these scam tracks have album covers that look eerily similar to each other, with a random, semi-abstract photo with a single title plopped in the middle of the image. Viilonyu is very obviously not working with Nick Hakim, as the style of this track is wildly different than anything I've ever heard from him. SPOTIFY PLEASE ALLOW THE COMMUNITY TO REPORT THESE FAKE ARTISTS!! Currently we can only report things like bio text, or a merch description. These tags are absolutely not helpful.

[harald_k]

Can confirm that this is still a problem, and happens to me too. I got this in Release Radar:

 

If you do an image search for this album, you'll see this spammer uploads thousands of randomly generated tracks with the same album image. He uses different "labels", but it's obviously the same spammer. This time he randomly generated the name "Alan Clark", and Spotify's automated systems weren't smart enough to realize it wasn't the Dire Straits pianist who had suddenly switched labels and distributors. Now he literally gets his face attached to this algorithmic spam, and I bet not all users realize what's happening and think it's really him.

[Bryneth]

Another obvious fake: https://open.spotify.com/album/6NgK8G45JzS003Z6CweH1Y

"Lil Hovis" - at least this one seems to have a sense of humour!

[Obi7]

Yess, was looking for this exactly. This artists has been “collaborating” with Nick a lot and has been putting his name in collab tracks that get pushed to my release radar when it is clearly spam/bot activity meant to steal stream revenue, and it is so fcked up that Spotify doesn’t even have an option to report spam. That’s crazy to me, and makes me think that Spotify is in cahoots with these duplicitous accounts

[Obi7]

Looks like the fella changed their name ever so slightly, now presenting as Vilronyu, still doing the same tricks. I clicked on their related radio station and based on the pics and artists that appear, it seems clear that the algorithm is somehow aware that this “artist” account is based in Africa, clearly an international scam network of some kind, like the old school catfishes and Nigerian prince stuff, but updated to steal stream revenue. Pathetic that Spotify isn’t doing more to clamp down on that.