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?

[Nonego]

Bots companies targeting artists by making lists then adding their email address and hoping you will see the effect of your track boosted and go back to them and make a payment for further promotion.
Spotify and distributors know about them so it should be unlawful to take artists tracks down or to negative effect artists Spotify Radio algorithms.
Spotify -the distributors and the Goverment should chase the bot companies and not the artists.

[DevonKeshFurtado]

Same, they removed said releases. Hope there is something spotify can do about it.

[MarisaMckaye]

This same exact thing is happening to me. I have never ever paid for playlist placement and am against fake streams. I’ve tried hard to gain organic streams. A song of mine got taken down because it was added to a bot playlist against my will and now (this happened within the same month) I’m suspicious of another song of mine that I’m sure is on a bot playlist because it spiked in streams and the data looks like bot activity and I reached out to Distrokid and Spotify but they will not do anything. I can’t even see which playlist the streams are coming from on my Spotify for artists page. Super frustrating and disheartening as an independent artist. Looking for advice. 

[FernLiz]

Yup I also got the strike from Distrokid.  Looks like they want to eliminate artists.  Most of the artists getting these strikes haven't done anything wrong.     Distrokid / Spotify could care less!!  I have never paid to go on a bot list.  I may make a whopping $8 a month with my music and now Distrokid is going to flag me for something that is out of my control.  Jerks!!! 

[ChironsDream]

I’m so sorry. It’s all so sad.

[ChironsDream]

It’s all a scam. They make more money independent artists get **bleep**.

[Nonego]

So sorry to hear that 😞 happens lately to a lot of Artists. AI WAVRS attacking artists and as results instead of penalising those innocent artists taking the blame.
We have rise the issue even to Goverment!

[Nonego]

Yes it is and it has to stop

[Nonego]

Mega injustice

[Nonego]

So sorry to hear that but we are taking action!

[TurtleFTW]

Just to update people as this particular thread has gone quiet. This is still going on on an industrial scale. Spotify has still failed to do anything meaningful to stop it. Spotify is still helping itself to fines at the expense of the victims. Artists are still getting thrown off Spotify as a result. And still, nobody from Spotify has put their head above the parapet in this thread.

[NikoGER]

Hey,

one of my playlist with 200 followers got botted to 18k overnight.

what do i do and how do i report this?

[cyble]

Is there a petition we can sign somewhere to stop this ridiculous system ?

They should just delay any payout and rollback the stats caused by botted playlists, suspend the playlist and contact the currator to get things sorted out. And have a system to blacklist any suspicious activity. But they should take measures themselves instead of having the distributor paying any damages.

[JeffdeBanoun]

I had one of my tracks removed from all platforms for alleged artificial streaming lately. 1 month before, there was an abnormal peak of Spotify streams on that track one day. I was unable to see the playlist that caused that peak when looking in the artist section. I tried to dispute the matter with Spotify support but the bot and then the human that I tried to contact did not let me discuss ( "You track was identified.... Sorry nothing we can do. Sorry I have to close this discussion now"). Since I never saw the playlist, there is no way I could argue and declare that scam playlist, which seems to be the only way to avoid this kind of situation before Spotify program decide to ban your track. I hope Spotify quickly improves their process when they identify artificial streaming.  

[Hasteg]

And now it happened to my band 2 days ago. Our debut track has been randomly added to a scam playlist called CHART PROMOTIONS by chartmob. I reported it as soon as I've noticed artificial streams in my spotify for artists statistics. But again, when I reached out Spotify and Distrokid support, they said there's nothing they can do about it, and my song will probably be "reported", whatever that means. Even though I reported the playlist the moment I saw it, it's still there up and running 3 days later, and the amount of artificial streams on my song is rapidly increasing. I'm devastated, because' I've been publishing music with Distrokid since 2018 with multiple projects, and has always been very careful about any kind of artificial streaming. But in the end, it doesn't even matter (c). I'm totally devastated and don't know what to do, this is highly unfair to all the beginning artists out there. I can only ask you guys to check this peace of scam and report it if you can (you should probably check your statistics as well, since this particular playlist has thousands of artists added in it). This has to stop. We must demand official response from spotify regarding this situation, this is a HUGE issue with the platform. And the biggest issue is that it's innocent artists to be punished, while playlist will probably still be there for months. It's so easy for them to get this playlist down and whitelist tracks of artists who contacted the support and reported the playlist (the least they can do), but it looks like they don't want to. They say they're worried about the artificial streams, but they do nothing about it. I'm furious.

[Nonego]

Hi there ,
So sorry to hear that !
It's true Spotify can take down those Bots but they don't act ..at the same time Spotify is been accused regarding usage of their own Bots to boost major Artists 'Drake case' v Spotify and Universal .
As long as there is no transparency that will go on against hard working legit independent artists.

[cyble]

I know it's absolutely unfair. I feel the same. Everyone feels the unfairness and pain. Did you file the botted playlist report they now have on the spotify site? 

The distributor has no blame, they are forced by spotify to take the track down if it's getting out of hand, because they get billed for it and only can take up a certain amount. 

Spotify has to acknowledge it's their problem and not divert it to the artists through the distributors. Other platforms that pay per stream should have the same issues. Maybe come up with a system that works together instead of desperately blame your main source of income.

So how do we handle this sh*t for now?

I can only tell what I found out to be our options:

- chat with support and tell you're botted and ask for the support hash tag and create a copy of the chat for future references

- report the playlist through their form

- when your track eventually gets deleted, no worries, just always make sure write down your isrc codes

- reupload your song with same isrc. The url will get a different hash, but the streams and history should be restored by spotify based on the isrc

- if you're not allowed by the distributor, use another distributor

And with every step make sure you appeal and protest against every action they take against you and save this to build a file. Whenever there's someone wealthy enough to file a lawsuit, we can all join in to provide the evidence of this ludicrous system.

That's all I can think of.

[Hasteg]

Hey cyble, thank you for the support! It's so good to know that I'm not alone and there are people who also find this utterly unfair and broken in so many ways. I have a question, though. Do you know which distributor is more on the "good" side in this battle, and does actually care for their clients when it comes to this kind of botted playlist situations? I know that my distributor DistroKid almost always drops the songs down without any right to appeal. I also heard from people out there that CD baby works almost the same way. Maybe there are distributors who actually listen to the problem and don't just clamp everything they're getting flags for without investigation? If my song is actually taken down at some point, I'd love to migrate to a distributor, who will at least be interested in my part of the story.

[HunterK]

I had this happen. I am with CDBaby. They acted like they didn't believe me and that it was my fault and yanked down one of my albums that had been up there for 18 years. I asked was there anyway to protect myself. The answer was. Don't buy fake streams and don't stream your music continuosly. So no help at all. They figure it is not their problem and do not want to deal with it. BTW When it happened to me, I didn't even notice till I got the nasty gram from them telling me. I am still not positive what happened. I did not have any unusual playlist show up on my band profile. But now I am paranoid when any of my songs get a lot of plays in a short time. No way to live.

[cyble]

It's a catch 22. The smaller distributors care more, but need to take the music down much sooner and the larger have more slack but don't really care about the individual. 

Just to clarify it more: spotify sends a report of botted activity and an amount distributors must pay as a fine. If they don't pay, they lose their ability to distribute through spotify. Their whole existence is mainly because they can distribute to spotify. So not paying the amount is not an option. But to not go bankrupt on fines there's a threshold above they need to remove the song or even the artist as a whole. 

Now from spotify's perspective: someone wants to get lets say a 1000 dollars from spotify, they bot for any amount less than a 1000 and they have a profitable system to drain money from spotify. Usually there's an average of paid customers and ad income to cover the cost. But the bots really drain that income from spotify. Then there are playlists that facilitate this which are commercially exploited. And all this is the result of a system based on trust and normal use being misused by people that just don't care. But instead of saying they should fix the issue by changing the system, they chose desperately to divert all responsibilities to the artists indirectly through their distributors. Which is just insane. It's guilty until proven innocent, but it should be innocent until proven guilty. And there isn't even room for proving anything.

If I park a stolen car in front of my neighbors house, does that make him guilty of car theft?