Spotify's Artificial Streaming Fines Are CRAZY

All right, so today is Halloween and I originally wasn't going to upload a video, but I wanted to cover something that's kind of like the scariest thing that happens to independent artists nowadays, uh, just because it's so fitting for the day. So, happy Halloween if you're seeing this on the day, and hello if you're not, but we're talking about artificial streaming reports and getting fined or getting your music kicked off the platform. Let's look at this email. Okay, I'm going to zoom in to make it easy to read. This is a courtesy note to let you know we have received the July 25 artificial streaming report change or charge report from Spotify and the following content has been flagged for artificial streaming for a significant number of streams. You may be aware that Spotify has recently started charging labels and distributors for artificial streams per their policies here. Here's the following tracks. I click it. I can see the different tracks and the artists that have caused the streams. Please be aware these charges have already been deducted from your account and your royalty reports will be adjusted accordingly which can be found in your sales and payments in your artist dashboard. Uh we strongly advise not to use playlist services that artificially and straight streaming numbers. Many DSPs exclude streams that they identify as artificial for both royalty report calculations and financial reporting in line with their policies. Note that any charges incurred as a result of artial streaming will not impact artists who are not responsible for the affected uh releases. Learn about Spotify blah blah blah. So this is an email I got from one of my distributors and it's I'm like that's weird. This isn't a project that I have marketed at all in July [clears throat] as far as I know. Um, so I go to look at the artist and we're going to look at it here. Let me just close out this screenshot and close that. So, uh, this is the project and you can see definitely artificial streaming, right? Like if if I go and I look at saves over time, this this was the only marketing I did for the project any time in the past year. I ran like a $100 ad campaign um if that and it didn't go well. So I turned it off after a week. It went very badly so I turned it off. And then randomly months later I get a random bot attack. And this isn't like a new thing. I I will link you a video right here that I filmed like two years ago, maybe more, about a a scam that people have been running since before then. So now it's been like three four years where people playlist owners would randomly add artists to their playlists as a marketing means because in Spotify artist you can go inside of your um your playlist and you can see what playlist you're on. So if you see a playlist that gets a bunch of streams you can go look at it and they would put their email or website in that thing. So they were you they were adding random artists to these botted playlists as a marketing method. And if you've ever gone on Reddit, r/musicmarketing, um, which by the way, we're doing an AMA coming up next week. So, I'll put the link to that down below. Uh, if you're seeing this in the future, go check it out if it already happened. It should be awesome. But it's you'll see people get their music pulled from from Drokid or CDaby or Tounore, whatever. And usually it's because of that scam. So So check out that video um after this one. I'll link it at the end as well. But um this is a little bit different because this it's when I look at the data like look at this spike in streams getting getting like 50 streams a day. This is not an active project by any means, right? And then all of a sudden 75,000 71,000 in one day. Um and we can look at the source of streams, right? I can go source of streams and I can look at active and programmed and you can already see right if I look at programmed nothing so it's not third party playlisting it's not algorithmic it's not anything I can look at other there actually is a spike in other for 29,000 and then active for 42,000 I'll zoom in so you can see this a little bit better active and other. So, this is like a new bot attack. And I don't know why this would happen. I as far as I can tell, it's random. Like, this isn't my main music project. This is like kind of an anonymous project that I have. And I I I don't hide it, but I don't think it's like someone went out of their way to attack this project or something because if they were going to do that, they probably would have gone for one of my more active projects. So, I have a feeling it was just completely random. And that kind of terrifies me. That's [laughter] why we're talking about it today. I was literally thinking today, maybe I'll get a what what kind of video could I do for Halloween? What's the scariest thing in music? Getting your music pulled off of platforms for things that you didn't do. Um, now in my case, the distributor I've gone through, um, instead of pulling your music, they just find you. But like this thing, um, I I believe Spotify took like $30 of royalties back. they essentially find me $30, which I don't even know if this project's ever made $30 in royalty. So, it's it's insane, right? Like, the fact that you can do nothing and if you were on one of the big bigger DSPs that are like don't have as much interaction, your music would just get pulled. And this isn't like a isolated case. I have seen random bot attacks happen, completely random. people I know for a fact had not initiated them and their music got pulled. I I hundreds of people that I've seen that happen to. Um, and Spotify kind of refuses to acknowledge that it's a it's a problem. Um, I'm fortunate in that I I work with so many artists and I know a lot of people in the industry. Like I as soon as I saw this happen, I hit up someone that works at Spotify that's decently hyped and said, "Hey, here's information. You know, it is what it is. If there's anything you can do, great." And he's looking into it for me. But like most people can't do that. And even for me, I don't think it's going to like unfind me. Um, but I'm doing it because I want them to fix this problem. It's been this has been a multi-year problem of of indie artists getting their music pulled or them getting fined for something that they didn't do. Um, and what is the way to protect yourself here? Well, the only reason that it happened with this project is because this is not an active project, right? If I go out and I look at the listener graph, um, it's not active, right? It's it's if I look at the last 28 days, less than a thousand monthly listeners. This is a tiny project that's not releasing music, that's not getting marketing. Um, and that's all it was supposed to be. It's one of my experimental projects that I do for marketing tests. And uh and I didn't do use it since like two years ago. Um and this project was susceptible because it doesn't have an audience. If I flip over into um like one of my main projects, this like there's 23,000 monthly listeners now. And then like a couple months ago when we were active printing a song, we were up to like 40. And if we get a burst of like a couple thousand fake crap, it doesn't like a lot of the times it's fine. Like all the bigger artists that that I work with, um like I have some artists that you have millions of month listeners or hundreds of thousands and stuff, if they if they get randomly added to a botted thing, it doesn't really matter because the percentage of that fake stuff is so small in comparison to their overall streaming activity. Um, but if you have 50 monthly listeners, if you got even a couple hundred bot streams, now you're tripping these algorithmic detection because essentially they're just looking like, are most of the streams botted? Yes. Okay, pull the song or find the artist. And if you're small, it's very easy for most of the streams to be fake. If you're a big artist, it kind of doesn't matter. And you know, this is my biggest criticism of of Spotify is that they've let this go on for so long and instead of their solution, instead of coming up with a solution that actually like helped the artist, their solution was we're going to find them. So, um, everyone, you know, everyone's judging Spotify for for all these other things that they're doing, like the the CEO donating money, the royalty rate, the royalty rate I, you know, I I agree with. They should do some stuff to try to rectify that. um or like the the ICE ads they've been running um which also YouTube has been running which also Meta has been running. There's all these things that people criticize Spotify for very very openly and very very vocally. I wish people were more vocal about this. The fact that like hundreds or probably thousands of artists are getting fined or they're getting their music pulled off of platforms because like you know if you're a serious artist you're you're over relatively let's say a couple year time period you're probably getting to thousands of listeners right just through any marketing effort at all. But there's a lot of people out there who are just casuals, right? They have a full-time job. They make music for fun and they want to throw it online for funsies, right? It's cool. It's a legacy thing, whatever. Um, and those are the people who just bail, right? Those are the people on you're really seeing online like, we're just going to pull our music from Spotify because it's just not worth it for them. They don't do any marketing anyways. Um, they're not serious artists. But it's still the fact that it happens is insane. And the fact that Spotify doesn't do anything about it almost makes me wonder is do they just want the people with small audiences to just leave anyways and they just don't care about those people that happen. And I'd like to not think that. But the fact that it's gone on for so long and this has not been fixed uh infuriates me. So this is kind of my rant for the day. [laughter] Um but yeah, if you want to check out that AMA, click the link below and come and ask some questions. And even if it's, you know, after I think it's on November 4th or whatever, it's it's it's this coming Wednesday. But click the link below, check it, submit some questions, and if you're watching after the fact, uh, go check out our answers because it's not just me doing an AMA, it's also our whole podcast, my point.4 cents. Check out here for this video that I mentioned earlier about that playlist scam thing that I mentioned because I actually like baited the scammer to give me like a PayPal address. Uh, check out this thing down here if you want to see whatever YouTube thinks you should watch next. But thanks for watching. I'll see you next video. Bye.