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

[JohnnyVanDyck]

Thanks Andrew, I hope Spotify will see this and finally do something about it. 

[1160616163]

It is totally unviable that an artist can be fined (through their distributor) for something completely out of their control (who adds their song to a playlist). 

Everyone agrees that streaming fraud is a major issue. But the approach of making artists responsible for this - when they are often the victims of it - instead of the perpetrators, is ridiculous. Simply go after the bot farms and the promo services.

Why, for example, is there no option on Spotify itself to report a playlist for being a botted playlist? You can only report for copyright infringement type offences related to the artwork or title. Being able to report a playlist as botted would allow Spotify to look into it and see whether they are running this type of scam.

In my experience, there are actually only a few major companies running this scam, such as WAV.AI. It feels like an issue that could be solved very quickly by going after that handful of companies, instead of trying to go after the thousands of artists who get their song added to one of these playlists (especially when they didn’t ask to be on it).

[Asteroid_Alan]

Voted! Something needs to be done!

Ive been reporting to spotify that one of my songs randomly ended up on a bot account playlist, it's so obvious a botted one. Reported so many times in fear of having my music removed, they just don't care, they either end the chat or refuse to take any action. The streams stopped after 24 hours (about 800 plays) but I'm still on this playlist! No contact details in the profile or playlist. I'm guessing some **bleep** paid for.plays and the bots just pick up low level artists to pad the playlist out. 

Spotify have been useless, won't remove the song, won't remove the streams (I want genuine streams!!!) My algorithm had just started to make sense, this has ruined it. 

Spotify for artists app should have the faciliate to report botted plays, have them removed and the tune from the playlist and all data associated with those plays removed. 

Free Spotify users shouldn't be allowed to have public playlists, if the bots have subscribed and found by spotify, charge them 5k!! 

[Lonelybenson]

Come on Spotify! Get your act together!

[susanglezs]

Thank you for sharing this!!!

[erikstearns]

Over the past two months, Tunecore, my distributor has taken down two of my three releases alleging that you're saying I'm committing streaming fraud.  I hired nobody to do any of this at all and don't feel it's fair that you should do this without warning or any third-party service to stream my material.  If that is going on, I know nothing about it!  Yet Tunecore takes my stuff down and says there's no recourse.  This is a SHAM what you big tech idiots are doing to small artists like us!!!!

[MarshmallowTheCorgi]

This is realnotperfect, and the exact same thing that erikstearns experienced yesterday is happening to me today. I woke up to see that more than 60% of all my music was gone. No warnings. Four songs were falsely tagged of "purchased streams" when I've never paid anyone to listen or playlist my stuff. I have not very many, but regardless real humans asking about where their favorite songs are because my songs are not production-flashy but rather more emotional validation, for some.

Not only were the 4 tracks removed- the entire collections that went up with them are gone.

I've already reached out to dozens of other people who are experiencing this exact same problem right now.

[krippo]

It semms I'm a "victim" too.

One question: does anyone of you know if there's a way to have the situation "restored".

Or is our music "gone forever".

Distrokid seems to suggest you have to upload the songs again, but I'm afraid that the process might cause a mess...

Any suggestions?

[MarshmallowTheCorgi]

Hi,

There's so many of us krippo. It's crazy. I've talked to so many people who are still experiencing this now, for example on Discord and Reddit among other forums/websites. Many feel like it's only a matter of time before something happens on a huge scale because so many "smaller artists" are in extreme anger.

Personally for me though, and in response to what you said- yes, I'm organizing my art now for re-uploading. Like I mentioned, I've emailed DK a bunch of times. Spotify employees who responded via chat were (though they're great people I'm sure) extremely unwilling to help.

You can DM me if you want to talk. I know how extremely horrible this is. It makes no sense.

To me and to others.

- realnotperfect

[erikstearns]

It doesn't help because even though you all have supposedly rectified the problem, TuneCore still will not reinstate my material!