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

[erikstearns]

I am, but it's very hard. That's just a straw that is breaking this camel's back.

[erikstearns]

It's another example of how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

[erikstearns]

Yeah. They do no proper investigation at all. It's all arbitrary. I'm
just waiting for the time when they can start accusing us of criminal stuff
without any proof. It's about to happen. Watch.

[NotD]

Total ‘suckiness!’
😖😡

[erikstearns]

Yes. Very sad. It seems to be the norm in the world today.

[chrix22]

Agreed.

All my content was removed from Spotify by Landr this week due to rogue vendors. Never buy any music store promotions from this site : https://comeup.com/

it sucks

I made that silly mistake but did not know it was drawn into shitty playlists.

Now I have an open ticket with support to solve it. Hope it will be reinstated.

[erikstearns]

That completely blows. Yeah, I never sign up for any of that stuff. With
me, it didn't take a shady service at all for them to remove my stuff.

[JairCrawford]

This seriously needs to be addressed. As it stands this seems like something small artists simply cannot avoid.

I released an album back in 2005, when I was in 9th grade. A little instrumental album. I did it through cdbaby and they did digital distribution for me. It ended up on streaming platforms. I have not done ANY promotion on that album since at least 2006. None.

And yet… it ended up on what seems to be a botted playlist for a day. A song spiked for a day and I didn’t even know what it was. I saw that my monthly listeners was somehow 700, and it’s usually at 0. So I logged into cdbaby for the first time in a decade and got my artist account on Spotify set up to see how in the world my old album got engagement only to find the pop up about artificial streams. I spent the next day researching about that and I am shocked that there still seems to be no way to navigate this. 

Now so far I’m lucky. Cdbaby nor Spotify have pulled anything and like, it’s an old album, I’m not doing promo for it. So it’s whatever (though I will be spending the next few months trying to get in touch with cdbaby support just to be on the safe side). But I WOULD like to make new music again soon.

Heres my thing… how is even attempting to do promo on Spotify as a small artist even viable right now? If this can happen to me, on an old album that I’ve quite literally just left sitting there, doing NOTHING for 20 YEARS and it STILL got snatched up by some scam bot playlist account. How is ANYONE supposed to navigate promotion which involves seeking out legitimate playlists without unwittingly ending up on one of these scam playlists? When it can happen to someone who has done NO promo at all?

I read to my horror, that some artists distributors removed all of their music from ALL platforms as a result of Spotify falsely flagging them. If this is true, then having my music on the platform could literally be a liability. 

Spotify, please take this seriously.

[erikstearns]

I totally hear you. Unfortunately, I have no answers to your questions as I
have the same ones. I'l say something that may really get me in trouble,
but I don't' give a damn anymore. The truth is, Spotify comes form a
socialist country - Sweden. They're preparing us for a system that has no
real justice, due process, or fairness. It's completely ridiculous. I lost
over two thirds of my releases and frankly, I'm nervous to do any promotion
because if I get lucky and get listens, how do you know if it get's shut
down or not? So, I hear you.

Erik.

[JoseCorteReal]

It useless! Spotify is using fraudulent playlists to take down your songs
and not pay royalties. They about these playlists. This is an economic
reason. No fair! They ara robbing us, specially, independent artists and
honest. They decide you are guilty without proofs. So sorry, In 5 months
they took more than 50 songs from my projects. They are thiefs and we can’t
do anything!