My song got botted without my consent and now I have a strike

[Renegade226]

My song was added to a botted playlist without my consent and the streams spiked into several thousands for a few days. I immediately contacted Spotify to report this and the advisor in chat said "everything seems ok, and there's nothing we can do, we cannot remove private playlists from our service"...then 3 months later Spotify issues a strike against my account for fake streams from that same song I tried to report.

Does anyone else have experience with this? And did they get the wrongful strike removed?

[lxtinkxn]

I'm going through the exact same thing right now. I suddenly got into a bot playlist and boom, there is a huge spike in my stream numbers. I immideatly get in touch with spotify support and they briefly said "We cannot do anything. If you did not buy bots and did nothing wrong then you don't have to worry about it." Now what? My dist banned me for fake streams. And I saw that alot of people went through this. Does that mean anybody can cancel anybody just by adding their song to their bot playlist? 

[lukewood]

You are right. Anyone can add a song to a botted playlist and have it removed. Imagine that, rival bands, people falling out on Twitter or distro's not wanting to pay. Was yours Distrokid too? Did you play the Wheel of Playlist?

[djgrumble]

Hi all, I am an independent artist on Spotify. In January of 2024 I noticed that one (1) song off my recent album (Freestyle Tools 2023, track name 'When She Smiles') received over 30,000 streams over the course of ten days, all from one city. To me, this obviously looks like a targeted attack on my account in order to get my music taken down. One of my collaborators, Kobe Banks, had the EXACT SAME THING happen to one of his tracks, and Spotify forced his distributor (DistroKid) to remove his entire album. I have repeatedly contacted Spotify for Artists customer support, but the "chat agents" seem to be reading off a script and don't my concerns seriously. This is my livelihood, and I cannot afford to have my music removed from Spotify due to third-party bad actors. What's even more insulting is that I pay THOUSANDS of dollars (over $10,000 in 2023 alone) for Showcase & Marquee, and I cannot get in touch with a real Spotify employee who will listen to my concerns. I have attached screenshots of the fraudulent activity. Any help would be appreciated. Please let me speak to someone at Spotify with some actual decision-making power!

[Bering444]

Any idea why someone would intentionally do that, in order to get you taken down?

[djgrumble]

I have no idea, but I can confirm this exact same thing has happened to at least one other artist I'm associated with. It could be innocuous (i.e. some third-party bots that someone paid for were "sent" to the wrong artist/track) or part of a broader conspiracy to deplatform indie artists and stifle competition. Who really knows? But so far, nobody at Spotify has taken my concerns seriously.

[kostafunk]

Songs getting played and songs get not played.Someone have hear your song put on a big playlist and you can have 100 or thausend Streams this is nothing strarnge.But the problem is Spotifys's politic itself.They send fines to the artist and this is illegal.No private company have the right to send a fine in money against nobody !!! So if spotifys AI system is so good and detect bots simply don't count them and delete it aytomaticly like Youtube does.Also if you get a Strike for boots there is no evidence for that spotify don't show you how he have figure it out that this streams are fake.This is like if you driving a car and the police send you a fine at home and say that you are was running with over the Speed limit and they have no evidence foto or something else and send you a fine.with this politic Spotify and Distrikid will lose many customers and maybe in 1-2 years both of them will be history because many Artist leaving Distrokid .Distrokid have buy last year the two third of the shares of spotify for 133million Dollar thats a lot of money so they want to get some money back how ?? Bots !! sending fines so simple !!

[septacom]

I had this happen to me and the support chat person just parroted scripted text about artificial streaming and then shut down the conversation when I pressed them on it. There appears to be no real effort on their part to address this serious issue.

[Nonego]

How about opening an investigation with a legal team so can be identified who is really responsible for that.

If the artist never authorised a bot company and the track has been taken down then he should be able by law to receive a

compensation. 

[Renegade226]

Our grievances about being summarily punished for "fake" streams are legitimate and rampant enough to warrant legal action. Barring a major celebrity, none of us have the power to individually challenge Spotify, but if we start a GoFundme or some other collective resource, we could pose enough of a threat for Spotify to rectify this injustice.

[Nonego]

Depending in the County the artist is based in. In UK for example the legal reps. can take a case with no upfront payments working on a win case commission.
As many artists are globally effected by bots without their concern, can unite and act accordingly as team unit.

[Lreds]

Hello! This happened to me too. As reported by the latest Spotify FAQs is up to the distributor to issue the strike and remove the track for suspicious streams. So in my case, as I didn't pay to promote the removed track  (its the same old wavr playlisters that try to sell streams), my distributor (DK) is breaching the distribution agreement not providing the service I pay for notwithstanding they have no proof I breached the TOS. Is this acceptable? 

[kostafunk]

I writte this for the 100 times !! Its illegal a private company in this case Spotify to send fines in money ok.Τhis have to be reported to a prosecuter.Spotify job is to removes fake streams and fake playlist without any fine you stupid.I give spotify 2 yeras then he is dead.They rise again the prices for premium listeners.Its the second time in one year.If this comes now here where i am i will cancel my premium acount and Spotify can go to **bleep** so simple.

[UserID13428102]

I had the exact same experience

[myxbro]

My music also got deleted as it was added to a wavr.ai playlist and spotify claims I paid for promotional services which I did not. Distrokid is not willing to do anything about it either. How can independent starting artists break through if this just keeps happening? @Spotify, how do you suggest that we proceed?

[lukewood]

I changed all my songs from Distrokid. I am convinced that Distrokid and Spotify know what is going on. They completely ignore the question so as to not incriminate themselves. 

[pianotpot]

Everyone on this thread - there is a new idea 'a way for artists to remove their songs from a specific playlist' that they suspect of being botted. https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/quot-Remove-From-Playlist-Button-quot-for-Artists/idi-p/... Please go and show it some love

[Renegade226]

Excellent - this is exactly what I've been advocating on my thread here. Artists should have the option to remove their tracks from**bleep** playlists. SIMPLE solution to all of this strike/fraudulent stream nonsense.

[HunterK]

Could be other jealous artists or just people buying those to mess with you. Spotify and the other aggregators can't control that. 

[Lreds]

From yesterday my track was added to a booted playlist again without my consent. This is the 2nd time in 30 days. The streams are always from Helsinki. I wrote to my distributor. Lets see how the manage it.

[Nonego]

Lots of artist got effected by WAVR AI bots.

Spotify and distributors know about them.

It must be unlawful to take artists tracks down. Even the Spotify Radio algorithms will be effected .  The solution is to complain to your government.