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.