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Hey there,
I am in a band called CØVES and today we received the gutting email that we have had a release taken down from Spotify for suspicion of artificial streams.
We have never paid for any music promotion service which is why when i noticed a spike in streams I flagged it Spotify via Spotify for artists in October last year. I asked if the track can be removed from the playlist, but I was told there’s nothing we can do. (Please see images attached).
Spotify for artists have been incredibly unhelpful, taking no accountability and suggesting i speak to Distrokid to resolve the matter. When speaking to Distrokid, the response i get is:
“It has nothing to do with Distrokid. We are just passing along the information provided to us by Spotify and we haven't been given any additional information from Spotify other than what has already been provided.”
We feel incredibly hard done by in this situation, as we were aware of the artificial streams and went through the necessary channels to report it. Only to be told theres nothing can be done and now we pay the price. To make matters worse, neither Spotify or Distrokid are taking any accountability and sending us the other way for help.
What can we do in this situation? It seems like small artists like us are paying the price for these bot streams. Spotify should be targeting the botters, rather than taking down our music. This was our first release and our most popular track, we had put a lot of time and money into organic social ads to push the track, and now we feel heartbroken that we might have to start again from 0.
Please any advice here would be much appreciated.
Can you add other distributors into this lawsuit? I can't afford distrokid so I use Routenote which has a bandcamp style method.
Our music has many followers and several sites that are very legit followers in the punk scene and have over 400 followers on Spotify. They act like you getting hit by a bot accounts for all your plays...
Like many others this week, my song was added to a botted playlist without my consent or knowledge. I've since reported the playlist, and it seems like the playlist was either deleted or taken down (the playlist was called 'Shoudz weekly trends'), but the botted streams still remain. I've already contacted both my distributor (Distrokid) and Spotify about this, but both were not very helpful. I fear that my song will be taken down sooner or later. So, what do I do now?
Dear xsolimini, one of my songs was also added to the "Shoudz weekly trends" playlist without having requested or given consent. I have made a report requesting playlist verification to both the Tunecore distributor and Spotify for Artists through its Playlist Reporter tool, but so far no response. What should I do now?
I will write again to Spotify for Artists also as a form of self-protection, because it would be absurd to risk being banned if that playlist were to be illegal, given that the inclusion was neither requested nor authorized by us.
Progetto Ogro
I just got hit by this today, I've never paid for these playlists, i reported each one that I noticed, which was about 4 of them. And yet now my track was removed. wth.
I have used the reporting tool and it doesn't help at all. Our label had 15 albums pulled offline due to these bot playlist scams, and NO we did not pay for that service either. You might check other sites, often when Spotify flags artists for these playlist your distributor pulls your music off all sites (youtube, apple, amazon etc.) not just Spotify. Spotify nor our distributor will let us dispute these either. We had no choice, we had to pull our entire catalog off of Spotify or risk losing more music from all streaming services. I hate Spotify. 15 albums pulled offline for nothing we did. Seriously, I hate Spotify.
You know WHY Spotify won't help or do anything??? THEY MAKE THE MONEY ON THE FAKE STREAM SERVICES!! They'll kick you off and not pay you, but they will keep the money for themselves! Illegal as FK
My first song release as an independent artist I released December 6th. It’s been 2 months since release and Spotify for artists shows that over 1000 streams have been flagged for artificial streams. And have been removed from my song. But they were all 100% authentic streams. I have proof of a viral Instagram reel about my song on the same day my plays spiked for a couple days while slowly rolling off. When looking at the location of where the streams came from they were all coming from genuine locations like united stated, the UK, Canada and other main places. It’s not right as an independent artist I have to worry about my song streams being taken off or my song being taken down due to a spike in plays while creating online content promoting my songs when it’s all genuine and there’s no proof you guys can show me that would say they are artificial. I was told to contact my distribution to get it fixed by showing proof to distrokid (Spotifys Partnered Distribution) that all of the streams i gained in those few days were not artificial by the so called "human" in Spotify's support chat thats OBVIOUSLY a robot that was just copy and pasting the same thing word for word that the last "person" told me. After contacting my Distribution multiple times and even showing screenshots of the viral video on the same day of the spike, i keep being told that they cannot do anything about it and that its on Spotify's side. but when i talk to Spotify its just a back and forth game. i am ANNOYED and beyond FRUSTRATED. How am i supposed to promote songs on TikTok and Instagram when on Spotify's "artificial streams" page it says that a sudden spike on a random day of the week can cause it to be flagged for artificial. my song spiked only a few hundred plays WITH PROOF but nothing is being changed.
exactly its ridiculous. theres NO WAY to talk to a real person
Just re-upload with the same ISRC code ...
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