Announcements
The Spotify Stars Program: Celebrating Values Week!

Help Wizard

Step 1

NEXT STEP

My release radar is full of new artist tagging famous ones to get listens (copyright violation)

My release radar is full of new artist tagging famous ones to get listens (copyright violation)

So I listen to a specific genre of music (grime) so my release radar contains almost exclusively brand new grime releases. This is nice as I get to listen to new artists, or discover new releases that I might have missed otherwise.

 

However, I also get a lot of fake songs where the Artist is listed as someone famous, or featuring someone famous, but it's actually someone with below 1000 (in some cases below 100) listens. 

 

Examples of these would include artists such as Headie One, Fredo, AJ Tracy, SL, Digga D and many more. I used to get one of these songs maybe every other week. However it has significantly increased and it is consistent. On my latest release radar I had three of these songs...

 

They are pretending to be another artist, using their name and brand and in doing so gain more listens and pop up on more people's spotify. This has to stop. 

 

Look at this (from my recent weekly - two songs from the same fake artist "CGM Digga D" (CGM is the music group ACTUAL Digga D is in) and have 'pt.2' and 'pt.3' to real songs of Digga D. I mean it's a complete joke, fake and absolutely ripping off the artist himself.

 

And some of these are just a re-record of the original song in someone's toilet (by the sounds of it). 

 

https://open.spotify.com/track/1xjOtXsy754Jv6jmO58yIp?si=tuwwSnmIS9KHH3YONgeQ7A

https://open.spotify.com/track/6g4aAJ9cXxTwtB1YOAD0Gp?si=ftgqBvllT8ujRws-ajqLsA

https://open.spotify.com/track/5NK6Qq7OODxtK5462U4vjB?si=MgaWBrAKTYCKIjiV0RODpw

 

This is flooding my release radar more and more, and I really do not feel like pressing the "Hide this song", doesn't matter if I choose artist or song, is doing anything at all in stopping these artists and this malicious practice overall. 

 

Make Release Radar Great Again,

 

ZoleeKing 

 

 

Reply
14 Replies

Hey @Zolee_King,

Thanks for reaching out to the Community and bringing this to our attention. 

 

We recommend that you get in touch with our Customer Support team. They'll make sure that the right folks have a look at the content you point out. You can learn how to do this in this Support Article.

Hope you find this useful. Keep us posted if you have any questions.

 

Have a great day!

Mihail Moderator
Help others find this answer and click "Accept as Solution".
If you appreciate an answer, maybe give it a Like.
Are you new to the Community? Take a moment to introduce yourself!

Hi Mihail,

 

Thank you for your reply, however I do not find this useful.

 

For one, when I attempt to do what you have suggested on my Pixel 3 I get the following error message: "Could not report, please try again". Spotify version 8.5.70.868

 

Second of all, where is the pc/desktop option for this?! Why am I not able to report Explicit songs, Offensive or infringing content, Broken or incorrect content from my computer? 

 

And third of all....back to my original point: why does this have to be so difficult? Please check out the latest song from my Release Radar, SUPPOSEDLY by one of the OGs in the grime scene, Suspect. 

https://open.spotify.com/track/2GzFuYgOTAN6gFksrlAn0C?si=4DaTFpiFQX2z_NGyoFTJWQ

 

Only it isn't a song by Suspect. It's not even crappy grime. This is heavy metal. Clear copyright infringement. 

 

I just want to support my favourite artists and help the community by reporting these copyright infringements.

 

It should not be this difficult. 

Hey @Zolee_King,

We appreciate your desire to support your favorite artists and report copyright infringements.

You should be able to do this on your Pixel 3. It's possible that some of the apps files have gotten corrupted and are causing such behavior. We recommend that you follow the steps here and perform a clean reinstall. This way all necessary files will be built anew from the ground up. If you have the option, could you also try it with another mobile device and let us know if everything functioned properly? 

 

In any case, you can also use this contact form to make a content report or follow the link in the previous post. This can also be done using a desktop device.

Keep us posted! We'll be happy to lend a hand if you need more help. 

Mihail Moderator
Help others find this answer and click "Accept as Solution".
If you appreciate an answer, maybe give it a Like.
Are you new to the Community? Take a moment to introduce yourself!

Mihail,

 

This has been very unhelpful and a waste of time. 

 

Release radar continues to get worse and worse despite my best efforts to block the songs and the artists, and your suggestions ain't exactly helping. I've tried your latest suggestion, and it takes me to an online chat with someone - I don't need to chat to someone I just want to report it...

 

Easily the worst service that my money is paying for on Spotify. 

 

Thank you for your help. 

Mihail, this is obviously a systemic problem way above your station - I'm getting sick of this problem too. Every week my Discover Weekly / Release Radar are more and more populated with tracks straight-up lying about who's on them, or by bands with identical names.

Tell me, why can't Spotify differentiate between bands with the same name? Don't they have an internal ID number? I will often get songs from the "wrong" band (examples: Low, Toto) which seems like a grade-school level IT failure.

These aren't "corrupt" files. Your solution shouldn't be telling users to play whack-a-mole with offending songs, especially when the submission process requires clicking through multiple pages. I should be able to report issues from the app directly - three dot button, report, "Artist misrepresented," done.

Spotify needs to better police who can submit content on behalf of an artist, especially major-label musicians. I highly doubt Apple Music or Tidal allow anywhere near this level of fraud. Can anyone just submit a song and say they're the Rolling Stones?

Hey @Zolee_King,

 

Thanks for getting back to us 🙂

 

Also, @thousandaire, thanks for reaching out to us.

 

We always strive to improve our app and the experience with it. We appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback with us and will make sure to pass it on to the right team.

 

You can also have a look in our Idea Exchange to see if someone else has already made a similar suggestion. If there isn't one, you can give these steps a go and submit your idea. That way other users can also support it. Rest assured that the higher the number of votes an idea gets, the more likely it is for it to be implemented.  

 

If you have more questions, we are here for you.
 

 

 

Ver Moderator
Help others find this answer and click "Accept as Solution".
If you appreciate an answer, maybe give it a Like.
Are you new to the Community? Take a moment to introduce yourself!

Agreed. Polluting my Release Radar playlist with unwanted music by imposter artists is essentially fraud.  It's either fraud by the fake artists who are misrepresenting themselves, or it's fraud by Spotify for knowingly promoting them though the Release Radar.  Some of the artists who now appear on my Release Radar don't have names that match artists I follow, are of a genre of music I don't listen to, are in no way connected to bands I follow though the "Fans also like..." list, and may even be international artists who have album/song titles in a language I do not recognize.  All of them also have only a few hundred to a few thousands monthly listeners and maybe a handful of songs available.  I'm beginning to suspect that they're being promoted onto my Release Radar playlist, which is basically advertising and should not be occurring since I play for a premium plan.  I've only been with Spotify for about 1 year, so I'm not attached and I'm now thinking of switching services because this is completely ridiculous.  

Hey there folks,

 

Thank you for your input and valuable info on the matter.

 

We've reported these issues and possible violations to the right team at Spotify, who are currently looking into this.

 

Don't hesitate to reach out again if you have questions.

 

Cheers.

 

 

AlexModerator
Help others find this answer and click "Accept as Solution".
If you appreciate an answer, maybe give it a Like.
Are you new to the Community? Take a moment to introduce yourself!

Alex, I too am getting more and more bs unknown artists (mostly young unknown rappers) on my Release Radar tagging in artists that I follow, who are from completely different genres. This used to be a one-off, but there are six songs on my latest Release Radar that are doing this! It’s getting worse every week and is ruining the experience. It’s obviously a problem and needs sorting.

Hi @azawardaz,

 

Thanks for the post.

 

As I mentioned above we've passed this on to the right team. They are currently looking into why this is happening.

 

We don't have info on an exact time frame for a fix to this, so we'd recommend keeping your app up to date.

 

Don't hesitate to give us a shout if you have questions.

AlexModerator
Help others find this answer and click "Accept as Solution".
If you appreciate an answer, maybe give it a Like.
Are you new to the Community? Take a moment to introduce yourself!

I've tried to block the fake artists by using the Windows 10 app, then using the circle with a line through it option (only available on Win10 Release Radar) and saying "I don't like [artist]".  I've followed this process with a rapper who is going by the name, The Cult, which is the same name of a well-established rock band that I follow.  The next Friday I still get this rapper named The Cult appearing on my Release Radar.  I'm giving it until the end of the month and then I'm cancelling my Premium plan.  I've had enough.  See the attached photo from the mobile Spotify app on my Android phone.  The hoochie is a dead giveaway that it's not actually a single from The Cult.  Fake The Cult Spotify.jpg

What I really don’t understand is why is it so easy for a random artist to tag songs with another band’s name? Can anyone upload a song and say they’re MC Hammer? No password or verification required? Or is the Spotify algorithm so dumb it searches for artist by simple text search, not by a unique artist ID#?

This is a duplicate of this thread: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Your-Library/Release-Radar-includes-wrong-artist-with-same-name-as-...

 

Please upvote that thread so we have a higher chance of this getting fixed. 

Hey everyone,

 

Thanks for your reports on this.

 

They help us a lot in the investigation into what may be causing this.

 

In order to keep all relevant information in one place we'll be closing this particular thread for future comments. Please instead post in this thread here.

 

The more examples we can gather, the quicker we can resolve this.

 

We'll be keeping an eye out for your replies over in the other thread! 

 

 

 

Mihail Moderator
Help others find this answer and click "Accept as Solution".
If you appreciate an answer, maybe give it a Like.
Are you new to the Community? Take a moment to introduce yourself!

Suggested posts