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?

[pianotpot]

I've had one on a botted chart m0b one recently, and I reported it via the spotify chat, and the playlist reporter, and to distrokid, and the playlist was gone the next day, so yes in that case it works. I also managed to report the description on one of the 'in waiting' accounts they have, and when they start to prep it for use and update the description to their site, you can report that if you happen to see it as it's against TOS.

[HunterK]

I'm no expert on the site. But it is working for me. But like anything you have to post it around to let people know you are on there just like any site. The only way you'll find out is to check it out for yourself. 

[HunterK]

The first time I didn't notice it until the playlist was obviously already reported by others, so it was gone and I couldn't do anything.  I don't check my artist account everyday. It was a shock when I had an entire album yanked too though it was only one song on it botted Now it has happened twice more and I reported it both times. But if you read all the comments on other sites, it made no difference. The artitsts still got punished.  The bottom line is Spotify nor your aggregator believes you didn't buy the streams.  And once Chartmob starts doing that, they don't stop. So I don't have much choice. I can remove myself or they will likely do it again. I just paid to have it released again, plus a fine and boom botted again right away. It makes no sense to stay on there. It is costing me more than they are paying me with the new scale.  That's about all there is to it. I wish everyone luck.

[anearlybirdofficial]

I'm an artist with a catalogue on spotify and I'm receiving weird spikes of streams for old songs of mine with no current or recente promo/playlist addition. Never used 3rd party tools or paid someone for placements. Every time I report this to S4A chat, the advisor does not answer my questions and ends the conversation. How can i defend myself, as honest artist, from all this? 

[basilbreen]

This morning, I received an email stating that my song “Supposed To Be” was removed due to suspicious streaming activity. I noticed an unusual spike in streams on January 1st, but I haven’t been able to identify the source or locate any playlists associated with these streams.

I have not asked anyone to put me on any playlists, nor have I paid anyone for playlist placement.

I contacted Spotify directly, and they confirmed that they don’t see the track on any playlists and that the removal came from DistroKid.

So now I've gone back to Distrokid and they have told me to contact Spotify

Can anyone please help me let me know what steps I need to take to get my song back on Spotify? I’

[HowlingHawk]

How is this allowed? My distributor is taking down my song saying spotify indicated botted streams - but IW as following the listener count everyday, and most of the streams were from SPotify's radio and algorithmic plays!!! I would never pay for botted streams but I have no way of proving it, and they have not given me any information about what I could have done wrong? Ludicrously unfair. 

[ChironsDream]

That’s what we are all saying. They have it set for them to make all the money and individual artists to get massively **bleep**.

[HunterK]

I don't think you can. Still waiting for the ax to fall again after being botted twice in the past two months

[becevka]

I have reported botted playlists multiple times, but no action from Spotify, and then they contacted my DSP to remove my release. I suspect those companies work with Spotify or DSPs to get less known artists to pay for their services. That would be the only explanation why they are staying there for so long even though being reported.
I can't believe that Spotify can't track them by description of the playlist. 
For example, https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4XAJow5MnBwiT35c1s9TTG this playlist keeps recreating and just randomly adds newly released songs, then they would run ~1k of botted streams daily. And they clearly promoting their playlist services in the description. And somehow, Spotify would not bother removing playlist.
Or check this one, clearly targeting distrokid releases https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7EqiakTq1iwYNZGb3qSe9X
Anyway, decided to try a different approach from now on. Will remove all my albums and only release single songs, pitch it to spotify editors, if botted and kicked again, no problem, will release a different song later or ignore spotify altogether. There are plenty of decent services where I can share my music for my friends and people interested in.

[Ashree16]

i just had this happen to me. i’m a newer artist and released my newest single beginning of january. i had my family and friends stream until they couldn’t anymore so i knew i was getting alot of streams. i used the wheel playlist on distrokid and got a bunch of streams from there. then i got added to this random playlist. now my song got flagged and i was told to keep it on the other stores but that it would be removed from spotify. well the song never left spotify. i know that because my friend had it come on her shuffle. i just checked today and they added it to another playlist of the same name and got 995 streams. i’m annoyed and don’t know what to do because i’ve never paid for playlists or bots to get streams!

[Busty]

Sad to see that this specific site been allowed to operate so long. They hit me too, Spotify defiantly isn't taking the matter seriously 

[HunterK]

They are targeting everyone. I use CDBaby and same thing

[HunterK]

Doing some research and it looks like Spotify cannot legally shut those places down. It is not illegal to sell botted streams. It is against Spotify's TOS and why they remove people's music.  But I still do not get why they are botting people who are not dealing with them. I wonder how we get in their radar and why. The only other thing I can think of is, it is jealous people doing it to us. I don't like I said, see why those places would bother doing that unless they are getting paid for it.

At any rate, the whole thing is giving me a headache and it is getting old.

[becevka]

For Distrokid, I saw someone mentioning that Wheel of Playlists is a main target, which now makes sense to me, as I have used it. Since it's refreshed quite often it provides a good feeding ground for their automation to scrap songs' URLs. 
I also suspect some playlist curators work with those agencies. For example, they can promise to add your song to a legit curated playlist, but also share your information with playlist agencies. Also, Spotify's own campaigns lead to better visibility for automation and the potential addition of your music to botted playlists. 
Regarding playlist removal, Spotify has no incentive to remove those playlists, they have no system to count organic-only streams or subtract bot streams from revenue, so they just make distributors remove our music to avoid paying us for artificial streams and keep money to themselves. Now that they are paying only when the song reaches more than 1k streams, they can add those artificial streams as paid-outs for artists, but since the distributor needed to remove the song, Spotify doesn't need to send the money in and keep it to themselves. So on paper, Spotify pays tons to artists but in reality, money stays in the system. Win-win. I won't be surprised if Spotify has created those bots themselves 🙂

[Bigmew]

I keep getting added to bot Playlists.
I'm sick of reporting a new Playlist every day.
Is there any way I can make this process easier?
I really dislike that I can't get notified before 1k+ streams already happened.