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.

[carlospr]

Thanks for the words Erick. I will check that YouTube channel today. The response fro the Custoemr Service of ONE RPM was terrible. They just don't care. They told me to go to another distributor. It's like someone blaming you for something you didn't do and also taking direct consequences. 

They ignored when I asked them about sending bots to any small random artist and that way that artist music would be taken down, just like that? This is insane!

[erikstearns]

Yes, the customer service response is common. I experienced the same thing both with Tunecore and Spotify. So that's not a surprise.
I hpe this information helps though. I hope we can put big music in its place.
Take care,
Erik.

[JoseCorteReal]

*Don't release albums to Spotify!*
*Just singles!*

*If they decide to take down a song, but it is part of an album, they take
down all the album. *

[erikstearns]

Yes, I totally agree and there are so many who agree with that.

Erik.

[xy_ge9-pzypt]

Artist support just tells you that the tracks have been taken down (duh obviously that was why I was reaching out) and then abruptly ends the chat. Not helpful at all.

Spotify support just tells

[erikstearns]

Yeah. That happened to me and so many others. If you look up Top Music
Attorney on YouTube, and you'll see evidence of that through the comments
alone.

Thanks,

Erik.

[lisawarrenmusic]

This just happened to me  My whole album gone the tracks were on and 2 were flagged.:( just now dealing with this.  

[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.

[Fabtones]

totally! they pulled my album and now I'm in the usual runaround between them and CDbaby. I mean wth are we supposed to do. you come by your streams honestly and when it looks like you're getting too many of them (isn't that the point of promoting yourself?) then they accuse you of cheating and pull your music off! This sucks!!!!

[erikstearns]

Yes. You make that point exactly. Because we're the smaller artist, we
can't get more than so many plays, else it's automatically determined that
we are somehow committing fraud? It's jut more of the big tech and big
entertainment censorship. I've had enough of it. It took me DECADES to get
to where I was before this started. Now I wonder if it's even worth it
anymore.

[NotD]

Totally agree! It's just disgraceful.... 😠