Spotify removed my track due to suspicious streaming. What can I do about it?

[KrustyRockStar]

I'm an Artist with Distrokid as my distributor.

Today, I received a heartbreaking email that told me the entire track got removed from Spotify due to "artificial streaming".

I do not, in any way deny that it could be the case (without my knowledge) but it was genuinely unintentional.

Many small independent Artists like myself are constantly looking for ways to promote our music to help grow our career. Since Spotify does not have an official promotion service (like Adwords for Youtube), there are tons of third party services out there varying from plain-sight obvious scams to possibly genuine. However, as you can imagine, it is always a gamble when trusting someone new to promote your music.

I would happily invest in Spotify official campaigns or any promoters that Spotify endorses, but they do not exist?

I honestly wished I could pin-point which particular promoter was the culprit as I've done full-blown $2,000-$3,000 press release campaigns and smaller, more focused Spotify campaigns for a particular track.

It feels a little unfair that there were no warnings to this or having a penalty whereby the "fake streams" would be just removed instead of the entire track. Of course, the Spotify analytics could give me a red flags if the promoter was using fishy-methods, but by that time, there's nothing I can do to reverse it.

This has hurt me real bad and I am absolutely devastated.

What can I do about it now? Is there a chance Spotify would show some compassion and reinstate the track?

Am I even allowed to reupload the track again under a different or same ISRC number?

Any advice would be dearly appreciated.

[JoseCorteReal]

Thanx Eric... I'm gonna see it... We must be together and close to people
that can help abou this. I remember some years ago Facebook did something
with data and had to pay a fine to some users. And it was a lot. Spotify is
having money problems for sure. It's shooting everything that's moving and
naturally causing problems to innocent artists. The problem is that they
can cause more problems as revenge. Small artists can't be banned because
they aren't happy with these actions... But we never know what they can
do... If we were a great band from a big company they would solve things
right away... But we aren't, we are the weakest link. They have so much
power that my distribution (Routenote) took down some albums and singles
from all digital stores because of Spotify's accusation. That's weird. I
would accept that if it was a Spotify complaint then they would take down
the stuff only from Spotify, but they decided to consider me guilty without
any defense.
Regards
José

[erikstearns]

Very well said! What you say is right on and it's time for the small artists
to finally prevail.

Sincerely,

Erik.

[DracorAlexander]

Same thing happened to me with Distrokid.  They pulled my album, saying that I was using artificial streaming.  I never used any service or did anything to promote artificial streaming.  It's just wrong what they're doing.  I SAY IT'S TIME FOR A CLASS ACTION LAW SUITE!

[erikstearns]

Hi,

Thanks for getting back to me on this and I'm glad you reached out. I'm
pretty much inundated with not only messages, but other things in life, so I
have to be cogent here.

I did some research and the best resource I found was that of Top Music
Attorney. I would check out the YouTube channel in that she gives a lot of
updates regarding Spotify and the subsequent distribution services scandals
like Distro Kid and TuneCore. She's recommended in addition to her
expertise in the music industry and the current scandals in progress, she's
also the spearhead of putting together a class action lawsuit. I highly
recommend subscribing and keeping up with her updates as right now, she's
the best chance at us coming together in numbers and rectifying this
situation.

I hope this helps and thanks again for reaching out.

Thanks,

Erik Stearns

[JoseCorteReal]

You must be on Spotify for artists and watch everyday which playlists are
adding you and if they are suspicious. Spotify is very smart they don't ban
suspicious playlists. those playlists use our music without us asking for
the service or paying for promotional services...
Spotify this way have a reason to takedown our music.
They took down this playlist finally. But my songs aren't back to digital
distribution,,,

CHARTMOB.NET - CHART PROMOTIONS
<>[image: image.png]

[erikstearns]

I don't really do that sort of surveillance because I'm just a one-man
operation. But, yes, they do set the system to entrap the small artists and
that's totally amoral.

[NotD]

Got zero support from Spotify. Was told they couldn’t give me more information and to talk to distributor…… distributor advised it was Spotify who removed the release?!  Spotify also told me not to pay for the promise of streams etc… I NEVER HAVE!!! Frustrating 

[erikstearns]

I'm not surprised. It was my story as well as so many others. I would
recommend looking up Top Music Attorney on YouTube. She gives great updates
as to the TuneCore, Distro Kid, Spotify situation. She's the one likely to
organize a class action lawsuit. I recommend getting information from
there, that way when it happens, you're in the know when it goes down.

Thanks,

Erik.

[Redplanetdrifter]

I just got a notification from distrokid a couple hours ago that one of my songs was removed from Spotify for artificial streams. DK told me to contact spotify and spotify said to contact DK. What a joke! All distrokid has responded with so far is “just say no to artificial streaming” like I’m guilty of that! I’ve never paid any promotion company for anything, and never will. By the way, the song in question has been on Spotify for over two years and has maybe 2500 streams, not like I’ve ever promoted it much myself.

[revenBand]

I woke up this morning to an email saying my new single was live and then I received 4 emails saying my old music has been removed due to artificial streaming.
This is madness. I've only used Distrokids services and have never paid for any 3rd party anything.
I contacted Spotify and they said yeah you have artificial streams contact Distrokid.
I haven't heard anything from Distrokid yet.
Today was meant to be exciting. Instead I'm having a full blown panic attack.
I am so upset.

[JoseCorteReal]

This is a security issue, Spotify should take down every
suspicious Playlists, with thousands of listeners and plays overnight. If
Spotify can see that one of your songs are growing too fast as they also
can see the suspicious playlist action. First Spotify should take down the
playlist and warn you about that they suspect that you are using external
services to boost your plays.
It's easy to Spotify, with all their Data experts they have, to keep the
surveillance over your music and see that it happens again... Then yes, if
it happens again, Spotify should take your song down. Fair enough. Not
being judged without proven reasons. Just guessing is what is happening now.

This ping pong between Spotify and distribution is just a
Financial/Economics engineering. is a Cartel action.
If they by "Just Guessing" take down millions of songs, they are sparing
millions of dollars on royalties. Someone is getting that money.
If you/we are innocent than they (Spotify and Distribution) are robbing all
of us.
This is lobbing, Maffia's power, whatever.
A good lawyer could do a great job here.
Cheers

[erikstearns]

Those are some fantastic points. Not only that, when do the artists have
time to search these playlists out, especially when the accused are not even
hiring any of these "services". I know mine have been growing steadily
because of exposure and have not experienced exponential growth. Yet,
TuneCore takes my stuff down because of Spotify's false accusations.

As I've been recommending, go to Top Music Attorney on YouTube for updates
on this as she's been spearheading the movement against these injustices
against small and independent artists.

Thanks,

Erik.

[user-removed]

Same thing is happening to me, music got removed. I know I got added to a playlist for about 2 weeks that I did not pay for, and it resulted in thousands of streams. I suspected the streams were fake because of the 80:1 streams per listener ratio, but what was I supposed to do?

I just spoke with Spotify for Artists over the website chatbox, and they confirmed that this decision is up to Spotify's Content Team, but there is no way to contact them directly. They advised me to reach out to my distributor (DistroKid), and said "It's indeed up to our Content team, however, you can't contact them directly. They can only be contacted by distributors so it's best that you reach out to have them represent you regarding this takedown. Don't worry! It's an established process between distributors and Spotify."

The email I got from DistroKid to inform me of this takedown said "there is no way to appeal this decision", and another article of theirs suggested that I reupload the songs. I brought up this article with Spotify for Artists support, and they said, "Content detected to have been engaged in artificial streaming is removed from our service, and will remain down until further notice. Reuploading won't be an option for you at the moment but if your content is reinstated, the streams won't be lost. You can consider uploading a remixed version that won't be detected as a reupload of the song (songs with identical audio and duration are linked automatically) and will start at 0 streams."

I was getting like, 5 streams a day for the past few months... not a big deal dude, and don't even care about the royalties. How do we get our music playable again??

[user-removed]

Fun to spam the support staff here - https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/contact-spotify-anonymous/

[erikstearns]

Wow. I had no idea that this is happening to so many people. I'm
responding to a bunch of posts per day. I totally feel your situation as
the same thing happened with TuneCore. Unfortunately, I don't know if
there's another distribution service that I can recommend. I heard of Band
Camp, but don't know much about it. The only streaming service that hasn't
taken down my material is Number One Music (N 1 M dot com). I have to sneak
a URL. Otherwise, if you've seen my posts, you also may know about Top
Music Attorney. She's got a bunch of information on these scandals and may
be the one who spearheads a class action lawsuit.



Take Care,



Erik.

[JoseCorteReal]

Originally I was on Number one music, but they were a little complicated
and slow to accept new songs, so I moved to Routenote and until this year,
I was really glad with them. Now Concerning this issue, they don't take
down the artists (I produce some) but they take down the songs in all
streaming stores accepting Spotify's accusations of use of suspicious
services. Even Spotify is shooting blindly, they only guess or imagine that
some artists are cheating. They don't have any proof. Only when you are
playing on a suspicious playlist. But that is not certain that you use that
playlist but is the playlist, for their promotion use random artists music.
I've been caught by one of those playlists and contacted Spotify. They took
down the playlist, but they continue to accuse me of using those services
and didn't take back my music, it's unfair. I've done their job, telling
them about a playlist that should have been banned for ages. Spotify is a
bad loser, they don't accept that this was a lack of Spotify's security
and, or by what I understood a bug (some artists say they had only hundreds
of plays and were taken down... I contacted the lawyer, but they must want
some money for their job... Nothing is for free... But when you have 5000
plays of a taken down music you don't have any profit to get a lawyer.
Spotify knows that, that's why they do it with small artists and
Independents. They don't dare to do this with the majors, and majors are
well known in the pust to cheat big in the music market..
My music and productions here... Share if you like it.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7AmUTcQ9PH8wwCwzERJ7vZ

[erikstearns]

Thank you. I just gave your stuff a follow on Spotify!
Take care,
Erik.

[joeldavidmusic]

Same thing just happened to me today. Notice from DistroKid about my content being removed. I was targeted by 3 different bot playlists over the past 2 months, none of which I paid for. I reported each of them whenever they showed up in my Spotify for artists, since it was all skewed plays from Helsinki, Finland.

Spotify support didn't do much besides saying they didn't have any "takedown metadata" yet for my track and that I should contact DistroKid, and they didn't help either. Same boat as everything I've read here. It's wild because I was getting decent traction before this notice with 20-30 organic streams per day. The bot playlists shot it up to 1k per day (for 1 or 2 days before being removed) which was extremely obvious. My music hasn't officially been taken from Spotify yet, but I figure it'll probably be gone in the morning 😞

[carlospr]

This just happened to me acouple of days ago and ONE RPM just said. Album taken down and that's it. It seems someone that collaborated with a guitar on a song released four years, not a single, sent bots to get this song removed from his profile. He and I don't speak. I told distributor to remove him fro the collab. My album was taken down two days ago. ONR RPM just said that they don't allow artificial streaming. They didn't care about what I told them. I've been releasing music for 11 years, 12 albums, almos 100 songs, and they just didn't care. Spotify Customer Service is terrible and rude. They say, talk to distributor and just finish the chat. This sucks so much. 

[erikstearns]

Wow. I totally feel where you are coming from. That totally stinks. I've
been in bad breakups when it comes to music partnerships and how they ended
badly for me. I also empathize with the take down. Ever since my post, I
received a ton of emails of people telling me their stories. Rest assured,
you're not alone, for what it's worth.

One thing that I highly recommend it the Top Music Attorney on podcast
platforms or YouTube. I especially recommend the last two or three episodes,
because she exposes the digital distrubuters' terms of service and such.
It's shocking. Personally, I hope that with her, we can start a class
action lawsuit and bring these power mongers to at least a civil justice.
What they do, just like any big industry has no regard for the smaller
artist.

I wish you the best and I hope what I shared helps.

Sincerely,

Erik