Stop Playlist Scams

[ASouthworth]

There is a widespread Spotify playlist scam that has been running for at least a year, and i've seen it result in artists getting their music pulled from the platform when they've done nothing wrong. 

Basically the scam is a playlist company will add songs by 2,000 artists per day to their playlist, pumps bots to all the songs on it (maybe even some followers) hoping the artist will see the spike in streams and check it out in Spotify for Artists. The playlist has contact information or a website link on it, and they're hoping someone falls for it and hires them for more fake promo.

The playlist company is adding songs without the artists permission, and sometimes artists get banned even though they never initiated this.

Here are some ideas for how Spotify can fix this problem:

1. Make it impossible to put URL's or email addresses in the playlist descriptions
2. Provide some option for artists to report the playlists and have their songs removed from the playlist
3. Create better detection algorithms that punish the playlist creator and not the artists on the playlists
4. Switch to a user centric payment model that makes bots non-viable
5. Impose limits on the Spotify API that make it costly for bad actors to scale these types of bot attacks

[lisawarrenmusic]

😞 this just happened to me. 

[lisawarrenmusic]

They say to use Spotify for artist ads but if you don't have enough streams you can't participate. So how are we supposed to market ourselves, when we can't even go through Spotify itself because we aren't big enough?  I play the harp my niche market resorts to mostly online as I am not mainstream.  When the songs we do market either ourselves or through what we hope is legit,  the songs get flagged once they get traction. From what I am reading we can't see what is a bot and what's not, people add us to a playlist but we can't take it down if we suspect it's a bot. Then our songs get taken down instead of the playlist itself. I am small, and I don't care much for a huge following and not looking for fast growth. I make music for others and myself it brings me joy. I only uploaded my songs because I was asked by my few fans where they can find me.  Over the past year, I decided to take myself seriously and I am now trying to build a following organically.  Through classes in music marketing, we talked about ads.  Before this year I did no marketing.   It's frustrating to learn about music marketing just to be flagged when we can't control who clicks us.  So far my distribution has been great and is working with me. But ultimately he can't see who is responsible for the activity and now I hear they get fined. He says it's just the songs but my whole album was taken down because they were part of an album. I decided to re-release some of the songs as singles. Now I think that may not be allowed to happen. 

[erikstearns]

Hey there,
Yes, I keep getting messages like yours. One thing that I recommend as a resource is Top Music Attorney on YouTube. She has a lot of good information about thse sort of things.
Take care,
Erik.

[lisawarrenmusic]

thanks so much:)

i really appreciate it.

[erikstearns]

You're very welcome. Glad I could help.

[Synthoid_Sounds]

This  suddenly started happening a couple of weeks ago, even though I've NEVER USED ANY PROMO STREAMING SERVICE on spotify.

They've changed something, their AI algorithms maybe?  Tried communicating with spotify live agents via chat, but they kept repeating "can't help you with that" and terminated the chat session(s).
This is really weird, my stream numbers are actually very small . . . why I got singled out for this I have no idea

[erikstearns]

First, you're not alone in this. I think they changed their algorithms because so many people are getting **bleep** by them. Look up Top Music Attorney on YouTube in that she talks about this sort of thing going on with Spotify, TuneCore, Distro Kid, etc. It's shocking what they do to rip off small artists like us.
Take care,
Erik.

[emst]

I am an emerging artist, and both my distributor and Spotify have removed my EP due to alleged artificial streaming. How can I prove that this wasn’t my doing and get the situation resolved?

The support teams at RouteNote and Spotify have been quite unhelpful, offering no real assistance—this is unacceptable! I can provide evidence of legitimate promotion through Facebook ads and SubmitHub, but the support teams aren’t listening to me. How can I make my case heard?

[JoseCorteReal]

Hello brothers

Are you upset about this issue? 

We The Tecnocratas (Funk Band from Portugal) are **bleep** with Spotify. Our songs ar released and some days after taken down for no reason. We don't use bots! Listen and share! https://open.spotify.com/intl-pt/track/4fr9duVuaFeeYLBraWIc98?si=c1de2fe47eea4c6f

[erikstearns]

Absolutely, I'm mad about this. They took down two thirds of my material,
one album right after another.