How to Avoid Music Marketing Scams
Scams in the music industry often promise results they can’t deliver, like fake streams or followers. Learn how to spot red flags and protect your money by understanding what legitimate services actually provide.
By Andrew Southworth
Hey friends!
As you may have learned by now, the music industry has plenty of scams trying to steal your hard earned money without giving you what you actually paid for.
I hate to admit it, but even i’ve been ripped off in the past when I paid for a service that seemed legit but then magically delivered 5,000 streams and 500 followers on Spotify overnight. This was in 2019 before I knew much about music marketing and I was pissed when I realized what had happened.
Every month I see at least one artist fall victim to something like this so I want to give you some tips to prevent this from happening to you.
What is a scam?
First I just want to take a second to define what I mean by scam.
A service is a scam if it misleads you into thinking you’re going to get X, and then they don’t actually provide X or give you something else entirely that you didn’t want.
For example, if someone says they’re going to run ads to your music on Spotify but instead they just send bots to your music. Or if they say they’re going to add your music to playlists and then vanish and block your emails / phone number. In both of these cases you didn’t get what you paid for. These would both be scams.
This doesn’t include services that just don’t work as intended, or were a bad deal, or didn’t work in your case.
For example i’ve heard an artist say that PlaylistPush is a scam because they spent $500 and only got added to 1 playlist that got less than 500 streams from it - it’s not a scam, it just went very poorly in their case. PlaylistPush is very open that you’re not paying for results, you’re paying for consideration. Sometimes that doesn’t work out.
How to avoid scams
Alright now let’s go over how to avoid scams.
Is it too good to be true? If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Proceed very carefully.
Does the company have a real name or face behind it? Typically scammers hide behind anonymity and don’t use any name or show their face.
Has the company been around for a while? Scammers stop and start new brands all the time because they get caught.
Is anyone talking about them? Has anyone recommended them to you?
If someone is cold emailing you, make sure their email address is from the domain of the actual company and not a gmail / yahoo etc. Also in general most companies won’t cold message you if they’re legit.
Is the company / person guaranteeing results? While it is possible to do this in certain situations, make sure it makes sense. You can’t guarantee ad results, or metrics like Spotify followers unless it’s a super high cost per result. Again, if it sounds too good to be true…
Are they asking for sketchy payment methods, like PayPal ‘Friends and Family’ or CashApp or crypto?
Avoid services on Fiverr for music marketing. In my experience they’re almost always scams. I’ve even had people on there pretending to be me or other known people in the space to scam people.
If an unknown person is emailing, texting or DMing you, don’t click any links from them. There are a LOT of scams that are designed to get you to click on something and then steal your passwords or other information.
If you keep these things in mind with any service you hire you’ll weed out the vast majority of scammers out there.
Most scams i’ve heard of have multiple red flags. For example they’ll have a guaranteed result at a price that’s impossible to deliver. For example i’ve seen people spend $100 for a service that guarantees 10,000 Spotify streams that claims it’s delivered using Spotify ad studio. This is too good to be true, and it’s a result that could never be guaranteed using the method they’re claiming it’s using.
This is why you should have some understanding of music marketing methods before you try and hire someone. If you don’t understand something it’s much easier to be taken advantage of. When you understand the process you can ask questions and pretty quickly figure out if something is legit or not.
Anyways, stay safe out there people!
Whenever you’re ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:
My courses. Spotify Growth Machine teaches you how to use Facebook ads to promote your music on Spotify. YouTube Growth Machine teaches you how to grow a YouTube channel organically and how to use YouTube ads. Fan Growth Machine teaches you how to build a website, online store and grow your email list.
My ad agency Southworth Media specializes in running Meta conversion ads to promote your music on Spotify and other streaming platforms.
Website / Store / Funnels. MusicFunnels and FanFunnels are the best all-in-one platforms for music artists to make a website, online store, sales funnels, build a mailing list and more!
1-on-1 consulting. You can book 1-hour calls with myself or my team here.
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