Create an option to report fake artist pushing generated content

[kweij]

Spotify is being besieged by one or more bots that push generated content (music, artists, albums) to create reveneu. This garbage will show on the Release Radar by hitchhiking on a genre, but does not match listener taste profile. It pushes actual artists from the stage just because they found a way to abuse the Spotify system.

For a listener there is no place to report this abuse. None of the reporting options suffice to report this kind of abuse.

Personally, this means that my Release Radar - a playlist that I used to look forward to - is now filled for half by one and the same bot, the same garbage generated tunes, the same <2 minute crappy songs. Here is the playlistlist, and I will keep adding it to show the impact that this abuse of the Spotify system allows for:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist

Please help me, make the playlists created by Spotify great again, they were awesome and The Algorithm used to do a great job at curating good music. But with this load of manure and the pushing of short tracks in favor of the length I actually listen to - your playlist now kind of suck.

[CeeKay111]

I've reported fake AI generated content including content that is mimicking and using the likeness of real music artists. 

Even though I have no affiliation with the real artists, I have dedicated my time and energy to reach out to Spotify in multiple different channels to have them take down this content. 

So far not only does the content remain, but new content is being uploaded. 

In this case, someone using the likeness of R&B artist James Ingram. 

Does Spotify even care?

[mxq]

 

 still a big problem 

[jspeaker]

This should be implemented. This protects the credibility of artists which should be a huge priority of Spotify. And this allows users to streamline the report. Accounts that scam users like this should also have an option to be reported as well as the song.

[xanovich]

I always reports fake collaborations, and spotify have the same answer to these claims. "we don't see nothing wrong here"

In my radar playlist I have 2-3 tracks with fake artists every week. Some of these sounds even like it is AI generated music. This problem won't go away, it will only become worse and worse overtime. Option for reporting fake artist should be implemented. 

Blocking such artist from mobile app (don't play "x" artist content) doesn't work, as this feature doesn't affects tracks in collaborations. 

[digimuziek1]

My daylists contained the song Fearless by a band called BLUEOX. Hey that is a Pink Floyd Cover I thought. When I checked the credits I noticed they pretend they wrote the song themselves! https://open.spotify.com/track/6ew3tLDK8nT0P7G7h2HPds?si=8c03026381264847. I wanted to report this song to Spotify but was told that the rights holder himself has to file a complaint. Spotify referred me to this forum for a report by a user. Judging by the state of this discussion it doesn't seem to lead to a thing. Come on Spotify! We are only trying to help! Help us in helping you to keep the platform clean!

[Hordo]

To answer CeeKay111's question, no Spotify does not give a **bleep** about this issue.
I also spend hours of my personal time reporting and they do absolutely nothing about it. Going on for more than a year now. The 'artist' I complained about earlier, is STILL UP!!! Actually making money on tagging artist with millions of streams and listeners in his total garbage music. 

And again, every week it's the same and I get fake stuff in my release radar.
Spotify couldn't care less. They like paying these frauds for the misuse of intellectual property I guess.

[alau71]

They really don't care. Saw a song that appeared on my favourite artist's page that is completely fake because of some bozo scammer that used her name for a collaboration (spoiler, it's not a real collaboration!), uses names and images from extremely popular media (legitimately screengrabs and copy pastes of character names for song names), and through this even managed to snag the #1 popular spot on the profile page!

All of the "songs" in their new "album" are just 2 minutes or less of poorly produced (dare I say AI "produced") beats that feature no one but the dirt eating no good scam "producers". I remember when Spotify used to be the "good guys" all those years ago. What happened?

[Peter-F]

This guy has been populating my Discover Weekly with fake/AI music for over a year and Spotify is doing nothing. He uses the same loops over and over. Each song is only slightly different. 

You can clearly spot these profiles. Usually they only have one song, or all of the songs have nearly the same amount of listens.

Fake Music:

https://open.spotify.com/track/3368zbu0STxCv0bLH1vSLF?si=06b386cf5abb407a

https://open.spotify.com/track/5BDXqpPmksCa7MzNFwFBjh?si=d1c54e26bc194516

https://open.spotify.com/track/4B2ZYfqwMDwJvhZLelXNaK?si=3ccc861def3c4ad9

https://open.spotify.com/track/7sdeBuJBXc0bSGPdotvFKt?si=0faa7116697245f8

[CeeKay111]

The problem is people imitating real music artists OR not using any or hardly any creativity when creating AI music content on Spotify. 

I don't have a problem with AI created Music In fact I make some myself! (I don't post on Spotify though) 

If someone is writing their own lyrics, or the majority of lyrics and the entire idea was from them... And they vastly contributed to the music - and the music makes sense and it is cohesive - then okay. 

But don't pretend like you are an artist or have an album when you are not. 

I love Spotify but I don't think I will subscribe to premium again until they get rid of these people imitating real music artists and these garbage AI songs.

[TheTraumedyShow]

I have had trouble getting Spotify to take down 1-star reviews that are clearly from a targeted bot attack (which happen to be from my disgruntled ex). Has this happened to anyone else? Friends have told me they've experienced this before on Spotify and other sites like Etsy. 

Since we launched 10 months ago, we have slowly gotten 120 reviews, totaling 4.7 stars. In less than 24 hours, we received 330+ NEW reviews and are now at 3.5 stars. The bad reviews started yesterday morning, and came in steadily throughout the day. I know the individual who did this is experienced with AI and programming, and intentionally spread them out to avoid being flagged as fraudulent behavior.

To combat this attack, we asked our listeners on social to rate us if they haven't yet. They rallied amazingly, and we received an influx of positive reviews bringing it up back to 3.7. As soon as we hit 3.7 however, we quickly went back down to 3.5 with another huge wave of 1-stars. 

We've noticed a pattern that once we are at 3.5, the negative ratings stop. I'm almost certain my attacker set the bot program to consistently leave 1-star reviews until we get to the 3.5 mark in order to seem less suspicious and not get flagged as fraudulent. If he made my podcast go from 4.7 to 1.0 stars in 24 hours, that would seem a lot more suspicious and Spotify is more likely to flag it. 

Our daily and weekly listening rates remain consistent. If these were actually hundreds of people who hated our podcast, we'd see negative reviews on other platforms too. We consistently have more listeners come from Apple v. Spotify. In the last week, we have not received a single Apple review, but received 330+ Spotify reviews in the last 24 hours.

I'm upset that Spotify doesn't have tools in place to prevent this - I work in cybersecurity, and I know there are products out there that are smart enough to identify these attacks and stop them. Bots can easily be programed these days to "listen" to 30 seconds of an episode in order to leave a 1-star reviews. I provided them all this information and they tried to tell me these are genuine reviews and there's nothing they can do. I kept pushing back until they agreed to open up a case that is currently under review. 

Curious if anything similar has happened to someone else and if you were able to get support? I'm worried if Spotify won't take this seriously, our podcast will forever be stuck in 3.5 star purgatory until my ex decides to lower the rating in the program.