Stop Playlist Scams

[ASouthworth]

There is a widespread Spotify playlist scam that has been running for at least a year, and i've seen it result in artists getting their music pulled from the platform when they've done nothing wrong. 

Basically the scam is a playlist company will add songs by 2,000 artists per day to their playlist, pumps bots to all the songs on it (maybe even some followers) hoping the artist will see the spike in streams and check it out in Spotify for Artists. The playlist has contact information or a website link on it, and they're hoping someone falls for it and hires them for more fake promo.

The playlist company is adding songs without the artists permission, and sometimes artists get banned even though they never initiated this.

Here are some ideas for how Spotify can fix this problem:

1. Make it impossible to put URL's or email addresses in the playlist descriptions
2. Provide some option for artists to report the playlists and have their songs removed from the playlist
3. Create better detection algorithms that punish the playlist creator and not the artists on the playlists
4. Switch to a user centric payment model that makes bots non-viable
5. Impose limits on the Spotify API that make it costly for bad actors to scale these types of bot attacks

[Mixepix]

This is so frustrating! It was annoying enough before as it messed up the algorithm, but now it's even worse when you have to worry about being pulled for something that you have no control over. 

[crazydigitz]

I've been thinking about the option #2 myself. An artist should have some control over the playlists they are added to. Simply adding a "Remove" button next to a playlist would be great. It's my track, I should have an ability to override someone else's decision, no matter what my reasoning might be. Option #3 is a must as well of course. Thanks!

[HaroldTwente]

Spotify only favours the bigger artists nowadays. Small artists are disadvantaged: in payment and opportunities. It seems like Spotify wants to bully the small ones, so they go off Spotify. It's all about the money.

[ThomasTempest]

Couldn't agree more 👍🏼

[Loko_Zarney]

This is a tough one and for us as indie artists we are always overlooked by spotify and alot of these companies take advantage and ruin our reputation by adding us on these ghost playlists against our will,  they do this with every single release and further email you to pay a certain fee to get more streams. 

[venuto22]

I believe this just happened to me. I saw a 2,338 spike on a recent song and the playlist was "HipHop by SoundTrap", while my song is indie rock. I looked in the playlist and much of it was other non-Hip Hop songs. In the description it had a link to www.soundtrap.club. At first I thought maybe it was just a mistake, but now I understand it was scam marketing attempt by them. So unhappy that I couldn't just remove my song from this! Luckily they removed my song from the playlist and I have enough legit listeners that I don't think I'll get the song removed for violation, but still this is very frustrating.

[ThomasTempest]

Spotify need to spend more time and money cracking down on bot playlists.

If they spent more time focusing on policing their own platform and keeping it a safe place for independent artists to release their music, rather than punishing and clawing at pennies from independent artists for Spotify's own negligence with policing such issues, the platform would be a much more trustworthy place.

Artists having the ability to remove their music from a playlists if they wish should be an absolute MUST.

• Also being able to report a 'suspected bot playlist' should also be an option.

[colortheory]

Happens to me all the time, most often the L.A. - Pop Tunes playlist by Ploppy. They admitted over email that they use bots. 

[Tajiez]

It won’t let me like vote for some reason smh

[JohnnyVanDyck]

Thanks Andrew, I hope Spotify will see this and finally do something about it.