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?

[gigamesh]

This is happening to me too. Friends are messaging me excited that I'm releasing music, but I've never heard of these randos tagging me as a collaborator. 

[1159653719]

This problem is getting worse and worse. I see it a lot with rappers who, based on the production values of the tracks, are unknown and just starting out. They tag dozens of massive bands as collaborators, mostly in unrelated niches and with band names that seems completely out of place for their genre.

This is a very clever game on their side. Nobody knows who they are, they have nothing to lose so they do this and suddenly are showing up in the discover feeds and new release feeds for 1000s of people. Free promotion. It's a little crazy that Spotify allows this, however. If someone tags another artist, that artist needs to verify this collaboration.

[CarlosE]

Hello folks,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community.

We have a process to report an artist or a playlist directly. In this type of reports, you can use the 3 dots of the playlists or artist profile and hit the Report button.

In case you want to report a specific song from an artist for having incorrect information, we recommend you to contact our Customer Support to help you further with this.

If you think that other users would like to see a report button on albums or songs too, you can give these steps a go and submit your idea so other people can vote for it. The higher the number of votes an idea gets, the more likely it is for it to be implemented.

If anything else comes up, the Community will be here for you.

[1159653719]

I get we can report but maybe Spotify should stop people abusing the system
instead of asking their paying customers to take care of it

[jeremycorbett]

I've reported a bunch of tracks in the past, it takes weeks for any action to occur, if any. Then the same artist does it again. And other artists keep doing it.

This has been an issue people have been reporting to you for YEARS. About a year ago, one of your mods took some interest, asked us to compile a bunch of data for him, then just suddenly gave up and stopped responding.

You have demonstrated no serious interest in fixing this issue. After many years of being a paying subscriber to spotify, I have switched platforms.

[LostInTranslati]

This is happening every week now in my Release Radar, and as someone pointed out, it's almost always rappers.
The reporting process is awful (I have to enter my email address, paste a verification code, and then the form that presents only has one option to do with the track visuals?)
The worst bit is that once you get fooled by these scammers, they keep reappearing then in future Release Radars because Spotify thinks you're a fan of them! Spotify need to do better here!

[Cthulhu1]

I get the feeling that there may be a Spotify promotion / spam service that will put these unrelated artists onto random tracks.

I think there should be a verification system, so that the artist tagged in a track needs to verify it themselves before they actually show up as co-artists. I am sure that the artists themselves do not approve of their name and reputation being used by a random artist for self-promotion.

Also, Spotify's algorithms for generating the Release Radar, Discovery Weekly and other generated playlists should be more clever I think; if I have listened to a certain artist, I'm mainly interested in music from that artist, not so much different artists (in a completely different genre like hip-hop) that happen to have that artist tagged. I mean I like collaborations, but only if they are legitimate.

I think this is a big algorithm abuse issue, and I hope the artists abusing these systems by intentonally mis-tagging their tracks with different unrelated artists get reprimanded for it.

[RunawayDroid]

This is happening a lot in the Synthwave community recently. There's an "artist" who essentially without permission takes other artist's tracks and sings over them, then releases them as collaborations to abuse Release Radar. Spotify and other platforms should at least have a tool to remove unauthorised music from the artist profile if nothing else.

[wa1]

Try to get your company to fix the problem for your paying customers instead of making your customers do the work. If we can figure out what is fake then so can you. At the very least, give us a report choice that is actually related to this scenario. Right now you can only report things such as the artist's bio text or merch. We can't even help you effectively as it is now.

[TorJarle]

It can't be to hard to just have a login for artists? To post as an artist, or to post a collaboration with an artist, the artist then needs to confirm in that account.

[Bowiemtl]

You can't even report the person doing this properly. It gives you options that all have nothing to do with fraudulent songs that are either taken from others artists, tag artists that haven't worked on the song or claim to be released on a label that they have no officially released on. I don't get how this is even a thing in the first place

[ATWB]

It's astounding to me that this STILL has not been addressed by Spotify! Talk about being hands off as a company. Literally screwing over artists letting people work the system.

[Jehru]

It seems to happen in waves as well - I get these 1-2 minute generic "songs" pop up, claiming to be collaborating with actual artists, headed by these unknown artists with only this one song in their collection.

Attempts to make "easy money" by taking advantage of the intention to recognize collaborators more fully. Spotify provides a method to credit un-credited featured artists, and this attempt is utilized to swindle Spotify.

The attempt towards fairness (even if small) is thwarted by a selfish sense of justice. The irony is tragic. 

[Jehru]

For sure, an option to identify suspected collaborative fraud would be helpful. Apparently an unseen loophole Spotify would be interested in managing (I assume they unwillingly pay for the fraud). 

[Anirrok101]

Just had this happen to me today!! So annoying. There needs to be a better system for this. Maybe the tagged artist has to approve their feature before the song is posted? 

[AlmaThomas]

This just happened to me, but they'd I'd not say it was a collaboration they are saying the I released the track, it only carries my artist name, and I've reported it, even so, spotify is saying it will take 10 to 15 business days to fix...... unbelievable 

[1159653719]

It's genius on behalf of the fake artists. Tag any high profile band you
like and enjoy 10-15 days of massive promotion for free.

[joshnorek]

It's driving me crazy as well. I work in the music industry and Spotify really doesn't seem to allow you to flag a song as being a fake collaboration. So ridiculous, and it leads to Release Radar increasingly losing credibility!

[LostatSea3]

Yes, I was hoping to find a way to report these.  It's not just rap artists. 
Joni Mitchell left the Spotify platform and removed her music.   Yet many many covers of songs of hers have her tagged as a collaborator.  And in fact it appears someone has uploaded  live recordings of some of her songs, with generic cover art, created a profile in her name and is profiting off it.