Spotify Being Scamed?

[louvest]

     My "Recently Played" list keeps getting filled up with music I know I have never played. Most of it is electronic tracks, not even really music, by "DJ Whatever" - no one I have ever heard of and no music I have played. 

     I know Spotify is required to pay royalties to musicians for number of times their music has played. I'm guessing this is a scam on Spotify to collect payments for music played by bots when the user is not using the computer (I find these "plays" on my desktop every morning). 

    I don't really have a way to notify Spotify other than this, that I am aware of. The culprits are: DJ Donnie Do, DJ Def, DJ Dula, DJ Dayna, DJ Nazara, DJ Dakoof, and others. Users are listed as Sachiko, Bryan, Maurice and others. 

     I'm going to take a screenshot, change passwords, and delete the "recently played". If you're interested Spotify get in touch. We can correspond more. 

[davidcola]

Hi @louvest,

This may be a problem with your password being exposed on some website or to some user. Like you said, I would change your password ASAP. If the problem still persists, consider contacting Spotify through Twitter or Facebook.

Hope this helps! Leave a like if it did.

-davidcola

[louvest]

Yes, changing the password seems to have made the issue go away, but it has only been a couple days. The larger issue of Spotify being scammed by bots remains. My inconvenience was negligible, but I suspect Spotify is paying a lot of money in bogus royalties. Money that should go to legitimate artists.

[davidcola]

This is definitely an issue the Spotify team will hopefully see and adress. Thank you for your post, it will likely go a long way in helping artists and Spotify to remove bots and bogus royalties.

Thanks!

-davidcola

[louvest]

Changed my password as I said above, and for a strong one, but today my "Recently Played" list showed a bunch of bogus music that I never listened to and when sampled is just generic sound, not really music (yes, I know that listening to the few tracks I sampled means I actually listened to them; but that is after I found them in "Recently Played").  

I want to emphasize that this is not particularly troublesome to me. The issue is - is Spotify paying royalties to people for these bogus "plays" probably made by bots? If so it is probably a large scale effort that is siphoning away royalty money from the legitimate artists who aren't showing up as recently played in many many more spotify acconts besides mine. Spotify? Are you listening?

[Peter]

Hey there @louvest,

This sounds like something our Support team will need to help out with.

Don't worry, there's some more information on the next steps to take here.

If you scroll down to 'Step 2', you can find the section about contacting the correct team, who will check things out in more detail for you.

Let us know if there's anything else!

[louvest]

Does anyone actually read the post? Your link has nothing to do with my
issue. I am trying to alert you to a possible/likely scam that causes
Spotify to pay money to bogus artists. Why do I care? Because it's probably
a lot of money that should go to real artists. Having read about a similar
scam somewhere else I'd say it's being run by bots and costing millions of
dollars.

[Peter]

Hey @louvest.

We appreciate your feedback - this is something we are aware of and we are currently dealing with. Thank you 🙂

We suggested you get in touch with the Customer Support team (as is mentioned in the link we sent you) so that they can help you eliminate the issue of the unauthorised playing of music on your Spotify account. If this doesn't particularly bother you, then you don't have to do anything.

However, we do urge you to get your account secured, because it seems that someone is using your Premium account without paying for it, which isn't very fair on you! This might also interfere with your listening when they try to listen at the same time as you.

Thanks again for the heads-up! If there's anything else you want to share, feel free.

[louvest]

Thanks. I did all that security/change password stuff in the first 10
minutes after I noticed the problem. Like I said, my efforts then went into
trying to alert you to YOUR portion of the problem. If you are aware of it
and working to resolve the issue that would have been a thoughtful
response. Instead, I was offered elementary advice that ignored the point
of my post.

I think I'm done. Have a great weekend.

[weedlove]

Perhaps try reaching out to their customer service on Twitter.

It's @Spotifycares or here is the link to their tweets & replies.

I see them replying to people all day long. Hopefully, that helps.

Also, if you would, I'd love to hear an update regardless of the outcome.

Thanks for caring.