Scam Artists tagging famous artists as collaborators has got completely out of hand, SPOTIFY FIX IT!

[jeremycorbett]

Creating this as a related issue to this thread that spotify have stopped giving a toss about: 

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Your-Library/Release-Radar-includes-wrong-artist-with-same-name-as-...

DO NOT MERGE this moderators, this is a very specific issue.

Release Radar is increasingly full of scam artists who tag more popular artists as collaborators. This is particularly egregious when they tag artists who are DEAD. 

This isn't just affecting big label artists, smaller niche artists, who are big within their niche are getting the same treatment. Maybe more easily as the smaller artists don't have the voice to do anything about it?

Just this week I have the following:

An artist called LYONA doing some cheesy EDM, it's their only track, tagging two respected electronic musicians Weval and Kiasmos - Kiasmos being the electronic side project of respected film composer Olafur Arnalds.

https://open.spotify.com/track/6paKr14sftVanI27eKzsgO?si=3423a7b44b4a4db1

An artist called EVASION, also only made one track, apparently in collaboration with Rival Consoles and Ben Lukas Boyson. No they didn't.

https://open.spotify.com/track/1Jy5X95KAHtjxw8sMcliXc?si=01e36412909c4cc7

Yet another artist with only one track, a cheesy EDM pop soul track with underground techno producer ASC?

https://open.spotify.com/track/5eGc1RlZIayx9KU2uqeHli?si=e919b5f42bb24d79

Apparently nothern UK house act Bent have created a grime track with an obscure non-english speaking rapper called Mevo? No, they haven't, its another scam

https://open.spotify.com/track/3h5P19YSWakEL726TvVQDy?si=202dd679b7f04f6f

The most offensive of all, some african pop act who, again, only have one song, which is a collaboration with british trans experimental pop artist SOPHIE, who sadly passed away last year. 

https://open.spotify.com/artist/69ldOtEHmmWC1i8UoeSjKp?si=wIHM-o0VRemRNLvkNI4XDg

This has gotten completely out of hand, I'm guessing these are being generated by bots now or something?

The worst bit of all this, is Spotify have REMOVED any way of reporting these tracks! If you follow the FAQ, it tells you to report the artist, but there is no option to report based on this critera, only info in their photos or bio.

Why won't spotify take action?

[mortiis469]

I cannot emphasize enough how overwhelmingly frustrating this is.   Spotify has (in my opinion) been above average with community involvement, especially when it comes to certain bugs or features that CLEARLY represent a need for expedited troubleshooting and patching.   

To me (and I am sure the vast majority of not just other subscribers, but artists) this is easily in the Top 5 of issues that we need to address.  It appears that it is with ease that these nobody "artists" are able on a weekly basis, every release day, release tracks with someone you'll be awfully familiar with.  An artist (band, group, etc) with MILLIONS of streams. 

Everything here to me is a "First World Problem".    That said,as paid users on your streaming application, this feature, or LACK of a certain feature creates this on-going issue that isn't something you wonder that you'll run into every now and then.  It is every single week without fail and I'd hope there is a method that your team can implement just to simply verify these CLEARLY new accounts with single or double digit streams and followers need to be checked if they ANY artist with over a certain amount.   I know on occasion a larger artist will feature on a smaller artists track.   This should not play a role in this issue.  What i'm referring to is ABUNDENTLY clear.   

Really do hope as in the past I've seen you guys act on some issues the user community faces like this.   Please address this issue at your earliest convenience.  

[VØ1D]

I agree with all the posts in this thread… it’s getting out of hand.

there has to be a way for a notification to be sent to all artists listed in the upload and prompt an approval from each artist listed. it seems like an artist verification/ approval process would eliminate the uploading artist from their claim of collaboration or artist feature if all parties listed in the songs credits must approve the upload.

this way the lesser known artist uploading media with false credits wouldn’t infiltrate the users preferences or infringe upon the rights of the falsely claimed artist involved.

does this make sense?

[Bramvh]

So frustrating, I'm following thousands of artists who's new music I want to receive, yet precious slots in the release radar are taken up by these scams. Most of these tracks are so trashy that I don't even think these are genuine starting/delusional small artists but just some kind of bot farming schemes that try to collect some streaming revenue

[amanderr]

Amen. I have this issue all the time, to the point where I've stopped listening to my Release Radar because EVERY WEEK there is a scam track mixed in there and there's no way to report them! There needs to be a reporting system added back in...It's frankly appalling that Spotify doesn't have all artists that are listed on a song approve a track before it goes live. Spotify truly has no respect for the artists who have their clout taken advantage of on a daily basis. 

[seekingstars]

Yeah this has been going on for many years now. I think some are bots, some are released by scummy promotion companies. However others (and probably most) are actual individuals doing this.

Because Spotify never did anything about this, I took matters into my own hands and started finding the rappers on social media and messaging them. Most didn’t reply, but one of them said that the rapper’s name happened to be the same.

If this is actually true, then certain distributors may be at fault. Artists get a unique string ID on Spotify much like all of its users do, platforms like Distrokid require the artist ID when distributing. If the two artists legitimately both use the name, why are they going onto the same ID?

I’m not entirely sure what Spotify requires from distributors prior to distribution, but if artist ID is required then there is intentional misuse on the user side: either the artist is pasting the ID that doesn’t belong to them or the distributor is parsing the artist name and pulling the ID for the user. In the latter, I’d have to guess those distributors take royalties and we have a serious case of fraud— or really crappy development.

[Dediqated]

So already for over 2 years this issue has been nagging users, including me. Almost every week there's a track by some unknown artist whose name always goes first in the list of artists, but obviously it had not been made with the well-known artist it claims to be a collaboration with.
Example of this week is the 'artist' zackLL who claims to have made a track with the famous Hardstyle artist Bass Modulators: https://open.spotify.com/track/6IwVs8GS5flYFXJV50GnfB?si=bca6231ad21f471c
It's not even the genre Hardstyle that the only 1 minute track is, which is the only genre that Bass Modulators produces. 
So I have this playlist called `Release Radar history` which gets automatically filled with what's in the Release Radar by an applet on IFTTT and when I checked this `zackLL` I saw that another track of this so-called artist is saved in that playlist... Oddly enough the collaboration has been removed but not the play count, which stands at a whopping 73k. So it hasn't been the first time this 'artist' has done this and it can just continue scamming Spotify for streaming revenue by tricking legitimate users into listening to their track of a fake collaboration.

On my Android phone I can just block this 'artist' so it won't be played again, but somehow that doesn't work on the desktop app and the underlying issue is not solved.
I'm so massive frustrated and fed up with these practices and Spotify doesn't seem to care to fix these very important issues, no they seem to rather break good working features (like removing the heart icon) or adding features we don't need (like (pushing) podcasts or adding the AI DJ).
I've been a loyal paying customer for many years but I find myself on the verge of ditching Spotify altogether.
Can you please restore faith and convince this customer to stay? I just want to listen to my favourite music without any annoying issues.

[Dediqated]

Update: some 'artist' named Lokass abuses the name of D-Block & S-te-Fan with a track called Eidolon Tears: https://open.spotify.com/track/57tJJ6bxNn7bkq0jOluwXK

I think I should keep updating this message with all the weekly examples I find in my Release Radar and it would be nice of others join in the effort so we actually show what's wrong with Spotify nowadays.

[Dediqated]

Just remove this SPAM!

This, most likely AI, 'artist' ZackLL releases tracks and tags well-known Hardstyle artists and somehow it's allowed to keep doing that. Why not block this name altogether?

Current victims are Phuture Noize, Sound Rush, D-Sturb:

https://open.spotify.com/track/6XGFBWHLMt4efg1pZd22iD?si=8b31a24f8ddc42f0

https://open.spotify.com/track/4CId5DkRGbmgOPZlKPsqCn?si=dab9aa8665594358
https://open.spotify.com/track/0Y458TWFUD66KTOJoMvJP8?si=edf04bdb31ae4134

[Auditory]

This is happening a lot. Since I am a fan of some big artists I like to check whom is putting their names in others artists music, and from my reasearch I found all of the next releases are using in this case the name of Akira Yamaoka unlegitimaly just to increase their stats (and profit/money):

https://open.spotify.com/album/3AzkrhSnlBq1gtMoxCt7nZ

https://open.spotify.com/album/0N6D6TXlEThPJn6zoSV6Tv

https://open.spotify.com/album/5ko6Ph2l84uEcdBfpso7e7

https://open.spotify.com/album/6kn7AstBV2mKYmfUSWdY2G

https://open.spotify.com/album/6D7IsjrVjvJmYzUNkhoZY5?si=PWZUpqUBSVabV6F0jhNpvg

https://open.spotify.com/album/7zqUK38F1dygjg1Td5eLCv?si=cUlm-NdFQzmy-SavIPW05g

https://open.spotify.com/album/0uJwKAeVEuKpUtLMReyvST?si=tHP28QwwQn27jNHIrKyUKw

https://open.spotify.com/album/66uJKyqzPk8gL5yOZbafXp?si=VBt90Yi4Sceb-PhvIS_6Nw

https://open.spotify.com/album/102QMEV95L2oGGrOTxVKhl?si=RjerE4OHT1a_lJwbJ8VsjA

https://open.spotify.com/album/4NjjCrJBfF29DNfj8ceelD?si=7pQnrDAaTMuXQlN6lxXJVQ

https://open.spotify.com/track/1z6dIuGOmqv1Q4kOp5Dx7w?si=c97ef07725dc409e

https://open.spotify.com/track/2nSdsoS9w17gDBo1r6NreN?si=b830af65195a4eb1

https://open.spotify.com/album/4TqGpooqfQuPZzCvCrdcI1?si=DvfIEqFpQ56Lzi1LXwscDw

https://open.spotify.com/album/17vlRD7TUL4mu4V5EmBjnV?si=WKBup7-2Q4yauKl3CFW5kQ

https://open.spotify.com/track/6nisku1jA276iSPEV7z4rl?si=61f505cb30b74987

https://open.spotify.com/album/3keRcSPGIDaveh6CTP2uzD?si=klwEDazLTEasBriji2MC2w

He has other collaborations but from what I could find they are legit, only the ones I posted above are using the name of Akira Yamaoka artist to their favor.

There are more instances I found on other artists. For example, this artist is an extreme case, he is constantly releasing music using the name of bigger artists, since he has released a lot of tracks I will just put his artist page: 

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6r9HJxSRfVfulIcmmPYYl6

He already has 60k montly listeners, but that's because he is using the artist names of Akira Yamaoka, Capcom Sound Team, Kikiyama, Yabujin, Falcom Sound Team, Yoko Shimomura, and more!

Something similar is doing this artist: 

https://open.spotify.com/artist/16P438JFSFAYNRodGAarKF
https://open.spotify.com/track/3r7jKp0QyN3IchCM7wfR8n?si=6918898512564484

https://open.spotify.com/album/7zqUK38F1dygjg1Td5eLCv?si=YE6mnZZFRdmj0-1lbCTc6A

I  can only imagine how many fake artists are out there doing this...

[alau71]

Wanted to chime in to the choir with my own anecdote. All these posts are right on the money. Years and no fix is unbelievable, but I guess if you view it from Spotify's perspective these scams drive engagement to the platform so maybe that's why they are so against doing anything about it. Shows what they're really here for (spoiler to no one: money!)

I've been following this small artist for years, and have seen her grow from a miniscule unknown singer to being mildly popular. She clearly works very hard and even though I don't know her it has been a joy to witness. To see a scam artist "collaborate" with her and to secure her #1 popular spot on her profile (!!!) is heartbreaking. I won't put her name here because I don't want to give this scammer any more attention (clicks are clicks after all).

And yeah, Spotify's reporting really is lacklustre and unfit for purpose, and their support are clearly very helpless in these situations. "Music for everyone" includes scammers and con artists too I guess.