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[Playlists] Solution to false/abusive reporting

Whenever someone reports a playlist - the title and cover art are removed immediately. This is often abused to hurt record labels and playlist curators. After contacting support - the account of someone who abused this system gets taken down. This person then creates another email and free Spotify account and repeats the process. 

 

There is a simple solution to the problem - enable reporting feature only after 10 hours of music/podcasts were streamed using the account. It won't change the experience for a normal user but makes copyright abuse impractical. It's cheap and easy to implement and would stop 95% of false claims.

 

Thank you for your consideration. 

Updated on 2021-06-14

Hey everyone,

 

Thanks for bringing us your feedback in the Spotify Idea Exchange.

 

Your suggestion has gathered the votes necessary and your feedback is now reaching the internal teams at Spotify. They're aware of the vote count and popularity of this idea. We'll continue to monitor and check out the comments here, too.

 

As soon as we have any updates on its status, we'll let you know.

 

More info on how your feedback reaches Spotify via the Idea Exchange can be found here.

Comments
aarongrubb

@NT88 - I would threaten to cancel, but I'm a musical artist affected by this issue and Spotify is where most of my money comes from. I just can't rely on it as a source of income if this continues. I'll be putting my energy into Apple, YouTube Music, etc. but I really hope they fix it because I love the platform

 

NT88

Yeah I'm an artist too so I won't be completely cancelling my account either but we don't need premium to update our artist profile or playlists. Spotify has the best variety of playlists to listen to but there are programs now we're ya can import them to Apple Music, YouTube, etc. 

aarongrubb

@nt88 ah! I see. Fair point. I could cancel my premium account 

NT88

Just got an email from one of my distributers and looks like Spotify are cracking down on fraudulent plays/paid playlist services and will also be deleting any artists involved, which is good of course but I imagine a heavy handed algorithm determines this and there will be some false positives. I already know of a few large independent playlist creators who have had their accounts disabled recently… even though they were only self-promoting their own music or their labels music. Artist accounts will start being deleted on Nov 2nd apparently. I know we all play by the rules so there shouldn’t be anything to worry about… but the world is a bit unfair at the moment so anything could happen. I just wish Spotify would allocate a few hours to fixing this false playlist reporting problem as well...

coolpanama
How wrong can you be, Spotify?

Letting sick people bully and harass your costumers, is one thing, Spotify.

Letting hackers do the same thing but then automated, so they have more
profit, is really mind blowing, Spotify.

How wrong can you be, Spotify?

You enable a war of bots on your platform. Our superb bot is now battling
the hacker's bot.

What a way to go, Spotify.

Shame on you.



I should have answered much earlier, but I had some personal problems to
deal with, sorry.
edyedy

Hi Spotify, 

 

I still get wrong takedowns of my playlist-titles, descriptions and thumbs. Why is this issue still occurring. It was good for 2 weeks, but now the new fake Spotify accounts are getting on track again. This is really annoying here and is also harming the whole community. Please do something about it! Thx, Thowe

andypolack

I'm back. I left my playlist alone after it being reported something like 80 times in 24 hours, but then 3 days later I thought I'd change it back again, and everything was fine for about 4 days and then the reporting started happening again and again. I decided to contact customer services chat as I wasn't getting any response from the email appeals (which I assume are just sent straight into the bin). Anyway, as you can guess, the Customer Services for this joke company, are a joke.

 

Here is a copy of the transcript for your enjoyment;

 

You|13:17 PM

Reported playlists
Bot|13:17 PM

Thanks. Hold tight while we take a look…
Bot|13:18 PM

– Bot has shared rich content with you –
You|13:18 PM

I need help with something else
Bot|13:18 PM

An advisor is best to help with this.
Bot|13:18 PM

Connecting you to an advisor now. This can take around 1 minute. If you can’t stick around, you can return to the page to continue later.
Mohammed Z is now connected and reviewing your question. They’ll message you shortly.|13:18 PM
Mohammed Z|13:19 PM

Hey there


Thank you so much for reaching out to Spotify. How may I assist you?
You|13:20 PM

One of my playlists keeps getting reported, upto 80 times a day so it is clearly a bot network. I have appealed every single report and no-one has come back from Spotify


You|13:20 PM

This has been happening from the 8th October.
Mohammed Z|13:22 PM

No worries I'm looking at this to help you out.
You|13:22 PM
>I sent the playlist link here<

You|13:22 PM

That is my playlist
Mohammed Z|13:23 PM

I apologize for the hassle.
Mohammed Z|13:24 PM

We don't have any more information to share, but we'll be here if you need help with anything else.
You|13:24 PM

Er, what
You|13:24 PM

It is clear that someone is abusing the reporting system to harass me.
You|13:25 PM

This is also not an unknown issue across the platform as there is a thread on the community forum that is 50+ pages of people encountering the same problem.
You|13:25 PM

Why can I not get a response to the appeal email and process.
You|13:25 PM

It's been 20 days, is that acceptable to you?
Mohammed Z|13:26 PM

My sincere apologies on the hassle you're facing.
Mohammed Z|13:27 PM

The best and quickest way to get this issue handled is to have one of our specialty advisors chat with you now. Is that okay?
You|13:27 PM

Yes
Lyuben B|13:31 PM

Hello, I am reviewing your case.
You|13:31 PM

Hello
You|13:36 PM

Are you still reviewing
Lyuben B|13:39 PM

Yes, we're a smaller team, so it can take more time, until I review your issue and find the relevant solution.
You|13:39 PM

Ok and thank you.
Lyuben B|13:40 PM

You're welcome. Thank you for the understanding.
Lyuben B|13:45 PM

Thank you for your patience. I'll go ahead and forward your report onto the relevant team for further review. If we have any follow up questions, what would be the best email address to reach out to you?
You|13:45 PM

>insert email address<
Lyuben B|13:47 PM

Thank you. I don't have any more information to share at the moment. Let me know, if there's anything else I can do for you in the meantime.
You|13:47 PM

When can I expect a response?
Lyuben B|13:49 PM

I've passed your report onto the relevant team and they'll investigate this further. Unfortunately, I can't give an exact time frame for this.
You|13:50 PM

An approximate timescale, are we talking a couple of days, a week, more?
Lyuben B|13:53 PM

I have no information on how long this might take, but rest assured it will be looked into. I'll be here for you, if you need help with anything else.
You|13:55 PM

That's it thanks
Lyuben B|13:59 PM

You're welcome! Have a nice rest of the day.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Cherry on the icing of this **bleep** cake is when I came onto here, they asked if I wanted to feedback on the experience and I said yes, completed the questionnaire and received a submission error, it's almost like they don't want to know.


This company, its representatives, its software, and its community are a joke 🙂

 

andypolack

I saw this reply to a similar thread on here so may reach out to this guy on insta. 

 

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/Playlists-Being-Falsely-Reported/m-p/5286393/highlight/tru...

 

NT88

@andypolack Yep that's similar to the live-chats I've had with them. They escalate it to the specialty team that keep you on hold for a long time and then offer to escalate it to another team. They won't get back to you. I've been waiting for weeks. They're better off being honest and saying that they have no intention of resolving the issue. At least then we can stop thinking about it and spend our energy elsewhere. I've lost a lot of respect for Spotify over the last few months which is a shame because I was once their biggest fan. I no longer pay for premium and have been using Apple Music lately... who are really starting to improve. Plus they pay their artists a little better too. Apple Music have endless funding/resources behind them so I think within the next year or two they will be pretty close to being the top music service.

aarongrubb

@nt88 same, but my problem is that I am successful on Spotify because the community is easily accessible. For example, I can find playlist "owners" on social media and simply ask them to add my music to their playlist. I've tried using targeted ads to get more Apple Music, Tidal, and YouTube users to listen, but it hasn't worked very well yet. Do you have any ideas about how to do that? I need to diversify so that the issue at hand doesn't affect my income so dramatically