Spotify for Artists stats not accurate

[NSP-Band]

Okay, so I am going to try my best to outline the situation in the most detail possible (stay with me).  Basically, my band released a single a year ago.  It did well but slowly started fizzling up until almost exactly a year later.  Still getting some plays (like 20 listeners, 25-30 streams a day), not bad for our second song a year after release.  It was sitting around 5K streams from what I remember.

About two weeks ago (March 19th) it had a little jump up! Nothing major, it went from about 20 listeners on March 18th to 120.  I thought okay, must've landed on a playlist or something, I'm sure that was it.  A few days go by, and it falls down to 70 listeners on the 21st, but no playlists showed up.  Then the next day it jumps back up to about 200-250 listeners a day and then starts snowballing, doubling/tripling listeners every 2-3 days (some days fluctuating back down by half, and then back up the next day).  We're sitting at about 1,700 listeners per day, with about 18-1900 streams per day.  

Now... I have scoured the internet and the Spotify for Artists data that they have provided, with little to no explanation as to where the streams are coming from, other than 88% of them being from our profile and catalog.  I thought that was super weird, I was expecting a playlist, or some algorithm movement, discover weekly, etc. but no. 

Seemingly 8000+ streams in the past few weeks from basically entirely our profile and catalog (88%) and "other" (8%), a 49/51 male and female split, and the streams coming from mainly larger cities across the US, as well as the age range is a little higher than we would expect, not that much engagement (saves, playlist adds). 

The weirdest part for me is that after contacting Spotify for Artist's help hotline by email and exchanging multiple emails with seemingly automated responses, I demanded a real person look into it.  They replied with a very short, straight-to-the-point email stating,

"We understand how important this is for you.

We can assure you that the stats you see in Spotify for Artists are accurate.

All the plays made on the release ******* seems legitimate.

If there's anything else that we can help you with, let us know." 

ANY ideas or explanations are welcome, we just want to know whether or not to believe it, or if this appears like bot activity.  I would like to add that we have never contacted, let alone paid anybody to raise our streams or anything sketchy like that.  Simply posted our songs and let them ride.  - NSP

[djgrumble]

I have not found a way to speak to a real employee at Spotify with decision-making power. The best I can get are those "online chat" agents who read off scripts. It's incredibly insulting to provide such poor customer service, considering I spend THOUSANDS of dollars on Marquee & Showcase.

[mcmfi]

I had this yesterday - the stats said 16 people listening now, then it boosted up to 40 people listening - which given we've been getting between 15-30 streams on our first release seems weird.

Now I have the holding msg We're still gathering your data. Check back later for an update.

Here I was thinking this was my big break and imagining that sweet sweet $2.32 paycheck coming rolling on in!🙄

[GalaxyTones]

Hey there, recently I've been checking one of my tracks and something caught my eye and confused me, which was two different numbers on all-time streams and streams. I attached the screenshot.
What is the difference between all-time streams and streams?

[Castrocavallo]

Hello. I received a Spotify recap with my stats for the month of december and it showed me a unexplicable high in the streams (listeners) during the 28 and 29.

My first song was released at the end of November so it made no senso to pass from 30 or so listeners to 500 in 2 days and i didnt know what to think.

On Spotify for artists i saw the graphic and the stats which said that most of them were from usa and gbr, another thing that didnt make much sense since im from Italy so, brokenhearted, i started to think about bots.

I did sent the track to a few playlists before but they were trustworthy, not shady or anything so i dont understand how It could be.

Plus, i found a warning, which told me that, if the number of listeners in the main page were different from the ones shown in the artists app, it was because some fake streams were found and deleted.

The number was still the same (around 500) so the warning was probably refering to a count that had already been done, which made me wonder if they were in fact ALL fake and Spotify's bot detector could only find some, or if the number shown in the Spotify page was the actual number of TRUE streams without the fake ones, as the message appeared to say. 

The only info the app gives about these streams is that they are all from "programmed listeners" and from "others listner's playlists", which are not shown.

Needless to say, after those two days, the streams dropped to the miserable number they were before this mysterious probably bot-made high. 

I contacted my small label but they said they had no role in the thing and to beware about this kind of stuff. 

I know the answer Is most likely that they were all bots 'cause it would made any sense otherwise, but still i ask if someone here maybe has a clue about what happened.

Thanks a lot for reading, i hope i explained the story properly. 

[JoseCorteReal]

Suspicious playlists are useful to Spotify. if they have a "reason" take down your songs in a day and you had 5000 plays to be paid, they don't pay you. Imagine how much money they spare with thousands of songs taken down...
It's so easy to find that your music has been played by a suspicious
playlist that adds you just to show a great number of artists working with
them. They even have links to their site on their playlists on Spotify and Spotify's so good on
surveillance, they catch you and don't catch them? Don't f...k me please.
Spotify allows those playlists because they are a great help, to not pay
small artists and do the big companies game. If you are an emerging artist
they blow away your work in seconds
Just in the beginning of this year I got 10 songs taken down because I had
no time to go to Spotify for artists and see if there was, any
suspicious playlist movement. I complain every day if necessary! About once a week!
My band sings about it! Tecnocratas - I AM A.I.

[stillilllife]

The other day I noticed that one of my songs overnight had gotten around 700-900 more plays than usual. After that day: Back to normal.

My guess is that it somehow got added to a bot playlist...I can't find the playlist at all by the way. 

My main concern and why I'm posting this is that I don't want my song to get deleted by Spotify because of this, so I'm trying to do what I can to prevent this.

I know that Spotify have a form to fill in for issues of this kind, but that requires a link to the playlist, which as I mentioned I was never able to find...

Any help appreciated! Cheers.

[beya_bl]

my artist acc got 716 monthly listeners out of nowhere i feel like its bot. when i went to check my spotify artist account it did that and i feel like its bots so is there a solution to fix that

[moetoslow]

Hi, got your question! "All time streams" are all the streams since the song was released. The "Streams" in the Overview are the streams within the specific time period (in your screenshot, the last 12 months), and can include segmentation. (I don't know why your streams are higher than your all time streams, though.)

Hope that helps.