Marketing company scammed me, I want to remove bots that may be following me

[yko-s_o213jyp]

Two days ago an advert popped up on YouTube promoting a marketing service that allegedly sends your Spotify link to users on instagram. It specifically said that it did not violate Spotify's terms of service and made it very clear that the streams were real streams from real people.

Naively I purchased their service, however after purchasing it, I did further research and discovered all the testimonials were under fake Spotify account names.

I emailed them straight away to request they cancel my account before they began operations and have only received their response 10 hours later. They have now cancelled my account however I believe I still have bot accounts following me and streaming my music from that 10 hour period. 

My concern is that everyday from now I will be getting fraudulent streams from bot accounts which I really do not want. I have worked very hard to rack up a high number of real listeners and streams, and I do not want my Spotify account being jeopardised by this scam. I have already emailed Spotify about this and effectively been told "We can't do anything, you're just going to have to sit and wait until our fraud systems detect this and then we will remove your music from Spotify." 

I really want to sort this out, it seems wrong that I could be punished for a marketing company's scam which I have done everything in my power to try and stop. 

I would really like to sort this out, I want to remove these bot followers from my account, I know exactly when they followed me so it would be easy to identify which followers to remove. I would also like to remove and fraudulent looking streams from statistics. 

Thank you & kind regards,

Jess

[OneByBoo]

Hi there @yko-s_o213jyp

thanks for reaching out !

Typically, when users with artists profile issues post in the community we provide them with the contact page of the Spotify for Artists division.

This division is responsible for taking care of any issue or answer any question related to artists profiles.

In this case, after viewing the answer you received from them, i'd have to back this up and let you know that the system are always scanning and cleaning and fraudulent happening with fake followers and streams.

So indeed, you'd have to wait and let the tech team fix this in the near future.

If anything accrues on your account or if you get and errors, make sure to contact support again and they'll take it from there.

Hope this shed some more light.

Let me know if you have further questions 🙂 

[metam]

Hello OneByBoo, to piggyback off of OP's post, does the artist receive repercussions if they are unaware/report the bot streams? Not just streams or followers being removed but like actually getting banned or having royalties withheld? I ask because I used a service from a marketing company to create advertisements for my music but I have heard mixed things about them. They seem legitimate, and promise to engage only real listeners and no bots. However, if they were to use bots, and I would have been lied to, am I going to get banned for their actions? Thank you!

[Alex]

Hi there @metam,

Welcome to the Community!

It's best if you reach out directly to the Artist Support team with these questions. They will be able to give you more accurate information.

Hope this helps 🙂

[TheoPratt]

You're doing the right thing by reaching out to Spotify and trying to get it sorted.