My Spotify got fake streams... here's what I did.

Have you ever received bot streams on your music against your will? 😭 Share your story with me in the comments below 🙌

Spotify will eventually get in trouble for penalizing the artist. Artists can't control who plays their songs. It is the playlists that do it. Spotify needs to take them to court. Time to get real.

I had one of these fake spikes from a company called Artister. I reported these fake streams to Spotify and wanted them removed, in which they told me to report the playlist, which I did, and they told me they would take care of everything… my music was removed from Spotify… I did nothing wrong and my music was removed from Spotify. Meanwhile, Artister is still allowed to be on Spotify… So obviously something much bigger is going on. It is obvious that Spotify has struck a deal with record companies because they need these bottled playlists to pad their numbers so that they can get on billboard, etc. And it’s obvious that smaller artists are being thrown under the bus to make it look like they are trying to “stop” it…. You need to do a video about how this is happening to thousands of artists… but I have a feeling that you’re probably owned as well, and could never do such an honest video. Prove me wrong. Thank you..

This is starting to get out of hand. Andrew southworth was talking about it in the GS forums. So many people are being added to botted playlist with streams from finland.

My lastest song was placed without my concent on a bunch of "fake" Spotify playlist. About 2 weeks later I got a Spotify take down notification. Then Distrokid wanted me to sign a document basically admitting I did pay for a promo and that I will never do it again. There's no way to prevent this assholes to put your music on playlist.

My spikes came from playlist that i never added my music to and they still deleted my music

It happens but then Spotify penalises the artist and flags them with artificial streaming

Good insights, thanks!!

Is everyone affected distributed by distrokid?

Interesting info, thanks for the video and research. Dealing with a similar situation right now. For what it's worth, I used the google translate camera app and the playlist you showed in another language says "elephant playlist".

Just happened to me ...they took down 5 albums and I only use distrokid and distrokids wheel of playlist...now I'm in hell trying to get it fixed ..no bots no out side marketing

I noticed a spike in my streams this morning and it doesn’t say it’s from any playlist

Thats exactly what I think just happened to me. My monthly listeners on Spotify suddenly jumped from 14 to 165 and I checked in my stats in Spotify for artists and it came from a playlist in Finland with one of my tracks ( Consolatio). What makes me think its nothing but botts is the fact that how is it possible that 150 people listened to one of my singles in Spotify and my other 200 singles didn't get any streams that same week?. I suppose if those streams and listeners were organic some of my other released would have been streamed as well .

This just happened to my latest single which was added along with 99 completely different new songs to a playlist created 3-days ago that is generating 1000's of streams a day in Finland from a couple of fake listeners (click-farm). Sadly it's not just a blip like yours as it's happened everyday since the playlist was created. They've even botted the followers up to 66k in 1-day. What I don't understand is how Spotify's algorithms can't see these botted playlists because the people creating them are not being very covert.. it's blatant! It's driving me mad as Spotify say they can't do anything and my Distributor is helpless. Spotify won't stop the playlister but they'll ban the Artist.. it's gone mad!!! 🤯 If anyone knows how to get a song off these botted playlists, I would be eternally grateful! 🙏

I made a mistake to trust a playlist promotion which had 4.9 of 5 stars in reviews. 1000+ positive reviews. Now i get some notification of fake streams. First ever promotion i done. Really hope the distrubitor/spotify can overlook that mistake. I don't understand why they put the blame on the artist and not the scammer. That scammer is still up and running , earning ALOT and fucking the musicians over and over.. Disgusting situation..

I’m on day 4 of being on this “Lemon Pop” playlist. I’ve gained 1700 streams on this song per day, and it was only at 3000 before this. Also each time I check the playlist from Spotify for Artists, my song isn’t even on it, yet it still updates with new plays from the playlist each day. It’s based in Helsinki of course

my song I uploaded with distrokid has 7mil and when i go to Spotify for artist i cant even check my stats on it and only can for my other song that has 630 streams

Thank you very much it was extremely helpful!!!

our song got removed from spotify today for artificial streams. spotify says talk to distrokid and distrokid says talk to spotify. we didn’t pay for streams and we don’t even know how to…was hoping to find some answers on youtube :( spotify says all we can do is prove they are real streams and we have no idea how to do that. Wondering if your video is what happened to us too.

This exact thing happened to me. But because of that blip my followers also doubled from 44 to 86. Though i searched to find the source of the blip i still have those supposed extra followers. They havent gone away. Question is if the 300 or so views vanished overnight then how come i still maintain these extra followers and are they real? Because im sure not getting any extra streams than i got from before the blip.