How Spotify Fights Fake Streams (And Why You Should Totally Avoid It)
Hey! Ever wondered how Spotify fights to defend their platform against fake streams?
Today we’ll take you into this crazy world and tell you about:
- What fake streams are
- Why Spotify removes fake streams
- Why musicians are tempted to fake streams
- Why that is a problem
- The alternatives you have
- What else you need to understand
We have the privilige to run Spotify promotions for over 7000 artists.
We’ve set out to learn exactly how to run a safe operation and allow for no risk to be taken.
So… let’s dive straight in so you can do the same!
About Spotify and Fake Streams
Unsuprisingly, Spotify has been the number one platform for music consumption and curation in the global streaming market.
With currently 180 million premium subscribers and over 225 ad-supported active users worldwide they are dominating most markets.
These listeners pay Spotify so the platform can pay you (the artist) with the collected money.
Here’s the trick…
With the idea to outsmart this system, artificial streams have risen to the survice through bots and hijacked accounts that are repeatedly streaming your music on Spotify.
The bots are software programs. Designed to perform the same task (listening) over and over.
They do not reflect a user’s actual listening intent at all.
Instead, they make attempts to manipulate Spotify using a bot or script.
That whole process, at the end of the day, hurts not only your streams but also your image as an artist.
Why Spotify Is Removing Fake Streams
You may be surprised: getting rid of fake streaming activity has been a challenge in the music industry and on Spotify for many years.
It went as far as the rapper J Cole addressing it in his 2018 song ‘A lot’
As a reponse…
Spotify chose to focus on removing fake streams when the music industry realised this issue caused royalties to end up with the wrong people.
The algorithm got all confused and artists pages got blown up out of proportion.
Ludacris… (Not the rapper).
The tricky thing is that, outside of boosting your own music, anyone can boost any given track as long as it’s online.
Yes, even when it’s someone else’s.
And that’s risky.
To confront this, Spotify even went as far as removing over 750,000 songs from Spotify. Including entire artist accounts.
You want to AVOID that.
Why do musicians choose fake streams?
As an emerging artist it might sound interesting to boost your streams.
Definitely considering the low investment opportunities that are offered.
You know, the “too good to be true” kind of opportunities:
They blow up your numbers. Algorithms will grow. You gain interest towards record labels. Thousands of people are are loving your music. And what not.
But guess what…
No matter how tempting those offers may sound to you, you should always know that Spotify can and will detect fake streams.
They might even ban your music from their platform. Not cool!
Therefore, you should always aim for organic promotion.
For example playlist marketing, off-platform advertising and other forms of (paid) exposure directly to Spotify.
Why That’s A Problem
Let’s get a little technical.
The problem resulting from fake Spotify streams emerges because streaming services (like Spotify) work with a system called the ‘shared pool’ model.
It splits income and royalties accordingly to the number of streams each individual artist has compared to all streams on the platform.
As a musician, you probably know that the more streams you have, the more money you get from that pool.
Therefore, you will earn more royalties if you have more monthly listeners.
As a result, fake Spotify streams sabotage the royalty splits.
Taking royalties away from the hard-working artists.
It takes from the “already reduced” pool of money available to you in general.
In an article written by Rolling Stone, it was estimated that artists are losing up to 300 million US dollars per year!
Did you read that right?
Furthermore, Spotify may withhold your royalties.
After discovering your fake Spotify streams, it will correct any streams you gained.
“Your quick efforts to boost your music, profile and income.”
So…
You should be very careful with the strategies, services and partners you choose to promote with.
ALWAYS confirm that they will promote your music organically.
At the end of the day, streams are not about numbers.
Instead they’re all about people connecting with your music and supporting you on the long term.
How does Spotify tackle the problem?
You may wonder.
Spotify has a big team of experts such as engineers and researchers.
They are especially working on detecting and removing this artificial streaming activity.
By combining algorithms and manual review they try to detect and target suspicious streams.
Like tracking your listeners’ habits and flag anything that looks off.
The next step is to remove and correct artist profiles that have acquired their streams through non-human listening behavior.
But yes, there’s more…
The majority of the information on the process of removing the fake streams is un-published and confidential.
This way Spotify prevents 3rd parties the fake streaming suppliers to optimise their attempts.
Makes sense right?
It’s a very secure process to guarantee safe artist and listener experience on their platform.
This helps them to not lose even more money due to fraudulent attempts.
A surprising fact:
The biggest scam of fake streaming was in 2017 by a Bulgarian playlist-maker costing the platform 1 million.
Crazy, right?
By the way: if you are interested in how to protect yourself from fake streams to keep your tracks safe on Spotify and other streaming platforms you can read our article on how to spot Spotify fake playlists here.
Now that you’re all smart…
What is the most shocking fact you’ve learned today?
Our strict advice is to not spend any money on fake Spotify streams and instead invest in efforts that will help you develop a real career.
Spotify promotion that will help you grow as an artist and bring you repeat listeners.
Peopel who will actually start buying your merchandise and coming to your shows in the future.
If you’re ready to take the right step , VIEW OUR SPOTIFY PAGE to learn more.
