Same here. I'm considering removing my music catalog from Spotify. Since they can arbitrary flag your music. I'm sure that if indie artists get organized and we all remove our music from Spotify, they will be force to change their rules. They are putting the blame on the artists not the end users.
This happened to me. My song had organically made 9k streams and one day had 2k and they took my song down. I have been fighting distrokid and spotify for 10 days. I am so sad.
@@rikuwaves sadly you will not win. You will not get help from Distrokid or Spotify Artist. The only option you have is to reupload the song and hope is not taken down again.
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..
Dude that is fucking infuriating. I'm sorry that happened to you. Spotify removed my first album and I remember the feeling when it happened. It feels so violating. The crazy thing is major label artists have millions of fake streams on their albums on purpose and never get their work removed.
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.
Do you imagine? Taking someone to court for buying premium subscription and using the services they pay for to do whatever they want, in this case play a song 24/7 xd no court will hold and they know, they’re gonna have to change the whole business model
I’m guessing it’s much worse than we all think. Big record labels use these botted streams to pad, their numbers to get on billboard, etc. I am certain a backdoor deal has been struck with the recorder companies to allow these bot company playlists. That is why these botted playlists are still allowed on Spotify. Artister is one of those companies and they are allowed to be on Spotify unchecked. Yet any artist who gets attacked by these botted streams will be removed…. That pretty much says it all.
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.
Same hear guys, FINLAND all the time, Spotify have now taken my album down, even though I didn't pay for boted streams, proper unfair, don't know what to do to stop it or get my music back on .
You know I thought I was on an island with this issue. My song which was doing so well with 4k organic streams randomly had 1.5k streams overnight and now it’s been taken down. Please if there’s anywhere we can place a petition to Spotify or distrokid on this issue, please do let me know.
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.
they get blacklisted and cant get put on spotify playlists etc. ur song also wont show up just on people through recommended or any other way even to your listeners. the only way seen is through link or go to it@@universe8828
That was my same issue. Now that song has been taken down. You know your level as an artist. If the song is doing numbers that you wouldn’t dream of overnight, I suggest, either trying to stream it organically till it outweighs the bots or start getting ready for a heartbreak
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! 🙏
Wait! This is exactly what just happened to me. I got like a boost in plays yesterday, see from some playlist that looks fake, majority from finland. I come onine to find the culprit. I hope it leaves soon wtf i never paid for any fake stuff and dont want it messing with my algo
@@alemonalemonalemon It may not be any comfort for you guys but they did eventually remove my track after 7-days. Their business model is to hope that the botted artist liked the boost in streams and then contacts them to ask to be put back into the botted playlist at which point they ask for money to place your track back into the playlist. If you don't contact them they will hopefully leave you alone although there is no guarantee they won't do it again. As Spotify has no way to report these botted playlists we have to hope that their "robust systems" (that's what Spotify said to me.. haha) eventually detect and delete the fake playlists. To be fair to Spotify I have seen one of the regular offenders have their playlist disappear soon after putting one of our songs in it. However, they just create a new account and go at it again. Thankfully... all this short term botting didn't adversely effect our algorithm and the "Fans Also Like" remained intact. I hope they leave you alone soon! 🤞
Yeah this just happens to me and my account got flagged and the email assumes I somehow paid for this. I never submitted my music anywhere. Or asked for these boys and I’m worried my music will be removed
Can u pls make a video addressing how to remove your song from a botted playlist you don't own that has no contact details on it? The community forum at spotify recommended I contact Artist Support directly, so I did. They replied "it is not possible to manually remove your track from a third party playlist" and then told me to try reporting it as a legal IP infringement form to their content moderation team, which is a total joke. I did this anyway, but of course the reported infringement was denied. Am I stuck forever on this playlist now?
Great question, and unfortunately, there is not a reliable way to remove a track from a botted playlist. I know this might seem very scary that the bot streams will continue without your permission, but there are really very few downsides as long as you're not using bots as your primary marketing tactic. So I would say, enjoy the fact that your play count is increasing, but realize that this growth shouldn't factor into your _actual_ fanbase growth.
@@IndieMusicAcademy the downsides are plenty, from serious consequences like Spotify potentially removing the song or removing the artist profile, to "mild" like screwing up your FAL category, which in turn will skew algorithm towards wrong listeners. Long term, this is not mild at all, very serious stuff. Instead of algorithms pushing your song to people who will listen for years, will become fans, buy merch and go to your shows, feeding algorithm wrong info will cause it to not promote your stuff.
@@IndieMusicAcademyi think someone add my musics in suspect playlist , What i supose to do? My streams down 910 for 710 , and the worse part its not more activin like fronzen.. Help us please
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 am kinda happy to hear, that I am not the only one with this issue. This happened to me and my album was taken down. Maybe we indie musicians should stop promoting Spotify and use platforms like TH-cam, Bandcamp etc more
This has happened to me. I don't know what to do. I feel pretty powerless to do anything. Tried explaining my situation to distrokid and Spotify, but they don't believe me and insist that I've knowingly used artificial streaming. I'm hoping my music/account doesn't get taken down.
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.
Got the same problem and Spotify flagged my song, the distributor doesn't want to help and then my song had a takedown on spotify after, 120.000 streams. (No, I haven't paid some sponsorshit or playlists), sadly now I do not know where to move for distribution and labels sucks
Thank you for the help, I almost lost my mind because of it, I was literrally thinking I would be banned because of that, but you just calm down my mind, preciate it.
i just woke up to an email from spotify saying they detected artificial streaming on my songs...i havent used/poid boosting service that uses bots to artificially boost my stream...how is it even possible for me to receive that email from spotify??? all ive done was share my links to my playlist of my songs in facebooks...never had i contacted any boosing service to give me a boost, or replied to anyone who asked me to inbox them...how do i prevent unwanted artificial stream from happening when im just promoting my songs in these facebook groups? should i stop promoting my playlist or individual songs from these facebook groups?
What about a surplus of streams coming from India but no playlist in sight? After talking to Spotify 6 times about the same issue it appears no one knows how to handle this issue. I wish it was just a playlist.
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
Great question! The solution is twofold: 1. Letting the bad "bot" data fall out of your recent analytics by allowing time to pass 2. Providing Spotify with better data *aka **_good_** streams from either Facebook Ads or legitimate Playlisting Services* I'm obviously biased, but the Spotify Playlisting service at the Indie Music Academy is second to none in terms of playlist and data quality. Try it out if you haven't already!
yes, forget about playlisting services for a while and focus on running ads, very carefully finding the right audience for you. it's going to take months and months, and it will cost you, but it can be done.
I will have listeners that will stream my song a lot some nights to fall asleep to. It's nothing irregular to have some people stream your song a lot on a playlist like sleep, but in this case I guess it was just coming from a bot playlist. always make sure to check where your streams are coming from
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 .
So this happened to me and I even checked and it says streams coming from other peoples playlist and they are from Finland. What's odd is that when I click on the song, it doesn't display the name of the playlist that's likely being artificially boosted. This had happened to me before, and at that time, I could identify the playlist responsible for the influx of streams. I'm eager to resolve this issue, but Spotify for Artists isn't currently providing me with information about the sources of these streams.
Same here, just got about 50 streams from Helsinki, Finland in only a few hours. Playlist owner is WAVR AI and it seems like they have multiple accounts/playlists. Pretty sure the one I was added to was made in the last month and already has 50,000 followers. Spotify For Artists support had me report the playlist. Did anything get resolved on your end?
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 had my album removed without warning due to this AI algorithm flagging random bot plays. It’s extremely unfair that the artist is punished by having its music removed! Furious! 😡😡😡
It seems that many artist are innocent they havent initiated fake streams. It is possible that sporify's enemy is doing this fake streams. How can Spotify consider Artist responsible for fake streams. Because , there are 4 to 5 possibility to every case . Also, it seems many artist are innocent. It is done by Spotify's enemy. Artist should raise this point on social media.
Yep my music keeps getting added to these stupid Playlists and it's worrying me that my music will get deleted, btw I have not done anything to be added to these playlists! 😭
Looking at the name of the user and the name of the second playlist, I think it's a restaurant's playlist. The username translates roughly to Restaurant Mr. Elephant, and the playlist name is roughly Mr. Elephant's Playlist. Not sure if the restaurant was trying playlists out and ultimate didn't use that one, but seems like that could be the case here.
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
We just had this happen to us. We had two songs added to playlists and our distributor kindly paused every single song on every single platform 😅 today we got an email to say apparently despite being paused our music still got offline streams which im not sure how thats possible or what im supposed to fo aboit it.
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.
I’m going through the same thing but I got a strike for it. I have 650k+ monthly listeners, with my top song that is Bury The Light which has almost 90 million streams, but one of my lesser listened to songs got a random spike in streams in October for one day and I got a strike for it just now. And I noticed today that another one of my lesser listened to tracks just got a random spike today and I’m worried that will lead to a second strike. I’ve never paid for any sort of promotional services, and so what am I supposed to do about this? Spotify support isn’t helping and it doesn’t seem like there’s any contingency for random unsolicited playlist adds. Hopefully Spotify sees how this is negatively affecting lots of people out of their control and does something about this before peoples accounts get deleted.
Yea similar situation for me. I’ve had two strikes for the same song in 1 month. I used a promo service or two 3 years ago when I didn’t know about this racket. They’re either going to need to change the system or they are doing it on purpose to earn money through finds and kick off small artists. If they continue this policy with out deleting the bad playlists etc we will all leave. I will not remain a listener if my artist page is suspended. Good luck!
yeah, this happened to me and spotify took my song down and I can't upload it anywhere now. I didn't even run any paid ads or anything at that stage. Pretty frustrating
AMAZING VIDEO BRO THANKS FOR SHARING AND BTW I LOVE ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME HELL YEAHHHHHH ***IN THE VOICE OF METALLICAS LEAD SINGER*** AND NO I DONT KNOW HIS NAME LOL BECAUSE I HAVE A TERRIBLE MEMORY AND AM TOO LAZY TO GOOGLE IT LOL PEACE!
I dont Know whats Happend with me , because in normal slide have a count normaly never down. And when i will check streams of music was freezed and i loss 400 streams please help me
Something i don't understand. When i started to distribute my music i didn't know about bot playlists. After one year one of my friends pitched my song to these playlisters it went well of course. Five playlists and Spotify paid royalties, second time i did it myself and they paid again. So now I'm confused because every bot city people talking about has already appeared on my Spotify for artists profile so i realized about 90% of streams are fake but why Spotify paid it? and why other people songs are removed by Spotify? Do Spotify use bots as well in their algorithms?😢
Its crazy. Something/ somebody is putting fake streams from country’s i have almost 0 listeners on my song. I didn’t pay for guaranteed streams or have anything to do with it. But yess my song is now offline and spotify is punishing me for it. If it stays like this we all need to go away from this streaming platform. They litterly are ruining it for every small artist last year…
Its really BS Spotify says you probably paid for some playlist promotion and I absolutely didn’t and they took my album down. No appeal process or anything. Totally unfair.
Hi, my first song recntly been added to a few playlists i suspect are fake and got alot of streams from them, i think the majority of streams for the realese by now. do you know if theres any action i can take against it? maybe report it somehow? couldnt find in spotify for artists anything about it. and since its most of my streams im afraid i might get banned or something even thogh i had nothing to do with it :/ anyways thanks for the help with everything :)
I get fake listeners from canada, argentina, usa, brasil and some of like that countries. I didn't pay for it but still my song on the list. I don't even see the list. Damn spotify.
I just got done dealing with a scammer (paid promotion) and saw a similar spike with one of my songs. I should be happy about the numbers, but I know they’re fake so I’m not. Feels like my song is tainted now.
No offensive. Your promotion website is really great, but ironically it’s still a number game. Like what you said in the description at the website to do whatever for streams. All these streams from playlists even though they’re from real and organic audiences it still affects the algorithm 😢
This has been happening to 3 of my tracks, except they are not on any playlists, and its been going on for almost 2 weeks.. I just watched in my account my 'people listening now' count went up from 0 to over 1000, and back down to 0 in a matter of minutes, I assume this is when all the plays happened, really weird and I wish it would stop, hopefully it stops soon.
SBOTify actaully a lot of streams are by bot playlists and it wont be flagged. plays are not an indication of success people , spotify doesnt pay artists and spotify is the last stinky desperate fart of a dying corpse. please purchase an artists music and downlaod where possible . Thanlyou
that's what i want to know because it just happened to me without any of my knowledge. i lowkey told the workers at spotify they need to have someone do something, because i will be unhappy if penalized. a lot of us work honestly and get unfairly caught up in this bullcrap scam.
Thankfully you only get penalized (and banned from Spotify) if you exhibit a long-term pattern of using bots. Once or twice won't hurt your music profile.
@@IndieMusicAcademyI had two of those spikes for a single song. I never paid any services, now this song got banned from Spotify. So, once or twice CAN hurt your music profile indeed.
This is happening to me too! Do you think changing distributor but keeping isrc for songs the same would help? Or would it be better to start fresh as a new artist with a new distributor?
*Have you ever received bot streams on your music against your will?* 😭 *Share your story with me in the comments below* 🙌
Goingbthru something similar right now
Same here. I'm considering removing my music catalog from Spotify. Since they can arbitrary flag your music. I'm sure that if indie artists get organized and we all remove our music from Spotify, they will be force to change their rules. They are putting the blame on the artists not the end users.
This happened to me. My song had organically made 9k streams and one day had 2k and they took my song down. I have been fighting distrokid and spotify for 10 days. I am so sad.
@@rikuwaves sadly you will not win. You will not get help from Distrokid or Spotify Artist. The only option you have is to reupload the song and hope is not taken down again.
@@jorgaridya7085 I see that now. I am joining the class action against them. They have one they started last year for this particular reason.
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..
Dude that is fucking infuriating. I'm sorry that happened to you. Spotify removed my first album and I remember the feeling when it happened. It feels so violating. The crazy thing is major label artists have millions of fake streams on their albums on purpose and never get their work removed.
same exact thing happened to me
the same thing is happening to me too :( i'm so sorry dude
Same exact type of thing just happened w one of my albums - it's been a nightmare
same thing happened to me with Artister. Six of my songs were removed. Were you able to fix it or anything?
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.
Exactly 2 of my songs were removed and I just re-upload em Thursday got a message of ai again like I'm not doing anything
Do you imagine? Taking someone to court for buying premium subscription and using the services they pay for to do whatever they want, in this case play a song 24/7 xd no court will hold and they know, they’re gonna have to change the whole business model
nobody is gonna get spotify in trouble bud, it's spotify what are any of us gonna do?
I’m guessing it’s much worse than we all think. Big record labels use these botted streams to pad, their numbers to get on billboard, etc. I am certain a backdoor deal has been struck with the recorder companies to allow these bot company playlists. That is why these botted playlists are still allowed on Spotify. Artister is one of those companies and they are allowed to be on Spotify unchecked. Yet any artist who gets attacked by these botted streams will be removed…. That pretty much says it all.
@@Neosentient-fm8uw indeed the major benefactors of botted streams are major record labels and major artists.
My spikes came from playlist that i never added my music to and they still deleted my music
Is everyone affected distributed by distrokid?
Yes
yep
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.
This keeps happening to my band and we've already been threatened once that our music will be taken down
Same hear guys, FINLAND all the time, Spotify have now taken my album down, even though I didn't pay for boted streams, proper unfair, don't know what to do to stop it or get my music back on .
Still happening in 2024 SMH
just happened to me finland playlist inflated 5k streams then spotify clipped my song. Imma email them today, I'll lyk how it goes
You know I thought I was on an island with this issue. My song which was doing so well with 4k organic streams randomly had 1.5k streams overnight and now it’s been taken down. Please if there’s anywhere we can place a petition to Spotify or distrokid on this issue, please do let me know.
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.
It happens but then Spotify penalises the artist and flags them with artificial streaming
What happens when they penalize the artist?
Sometimes
they get blacklisted and cant get put on spotify playlists etc. ur song also wont show up just on people through recommended or any other way even to your listeners. the only way seen is through link or go to it@@universe8828
@@universe8828They delete yo song and give you a strike
@@universe8828they take away the streams generated on that song
I noticed a spike in my streams this morning and it doesn’t say it’s from any playlist
That was my same issue. Now that song has been taken down. You know your level as an artist. If the song is doing numbers that you wouldn’t dream of overnight, I suggest, either trying to stream it organically till it outweighs the bots or start getting ready for a heartbreak
literally same
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! 🙏
Wait! This is exactly what just happened to me. I got like a boost in plays yesterday, see from some playlist that looks fake, majority from finland. I come onine to find the culprit. I hope it leaves soon wtf i never paid for any fake stuff and dont want it messing with my algo
Same thing here, getting fake streams from Finland. I hope they stop too and I hope it won't mess my spotify up too much!
@@alemonalemonalemon It may not be any comfort for you guys but they did eventually remove my track after 7-days. Their business model is to hope that the botted artist liked the boost in streams and then contacts them to ask to be put back into the botted playlist at which point they ask for money to place your track back into the playlist. If you don't contact them they will hopefully leave you alone although there is no guarantee they won't do it again. As Spotify has no way to report these botted playlists we have to hope that their "robust systems" (that's what Spotify said to me.. haha) eventually detect and delete the fake playlists. To be fair to Spotify I have seen one of the regular offenders have their playlist disappear soon after putting one of our songs in it. However, they just create a new account and go at it again. Thankfully... all this short term botting didn't adversely effect our algorithm and the "Fans Also Like" remained intact. I hope they leave you alone soon! 🤞
@@FatTonyTheSkipperHey aquastar55 see my reply to @alemon7978. 🙂
Yeah this just happens to me and my account got flagged and the email assumes I somehow paid for this. I never submitted my music anywhere. Or asked for these boys and I’m worried my music will be removed
Can u pls make a video addressing how to remove your song from a botted playlist you don't own that has no contact details on it? The community forum at spotify recommended I contact Artist Support directly, so I did. They replied "it is not possible to manually remove your track from a third party playlist" and then told me to try reporting it as a legal IP infringement form to their content moderation team, which is a total joke. I did this anyway, but of course the reported infringement was denied. Am I stuck forever on this playlist now?
Great question, and unfortunately, there is not a reliable way to remove a track from a botted playlist. I know this might seem very scary that the bot streams will continue without your permission, but there are really very few downsides as long as you're not using bots as your primary marketing tactic. So I would say, enjoy the fact that your play count is increasing, but realize that this growth shouldn't factor into your _actual_ fanbase growth.
@@IndieMusicAcademy the downsides are plenty, from serious consequences like Spotify potentially removing the song or removing the artist profile, to "mild" like screwing up your FAL category, which in turn will skew algorithm towards wrong listeners. Long term, this is not mild at all, very serious stuff. Instead of algorithms pushing your song to people who will listen for years, will become fans, buy merch and go to your shows, feeding algorithm wrong info will cause it to not promote your stuff.
@@IndieMusicAcademyi think someone add my musics in suspect playlist , What i supose to do? My streams down 910 for 710 , and the worse part its not more activin like fronzen..
Help us please
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..
Artist can in theory just bot their competitors and get them banned.
They will shadowban that track forever. Even if it's not your fault. Spotify is 💩
Who was the company
I am kinda happy to hear, that I am not the only one with this issue. This happened to me and my album was taken down.
Maybe we indie musicians should stop promoting Spotify and use platforms like TH-cam, Bandcamp etc more
This has happened to me. I don't know what to do. I feel pretty powerless to do anything. Tried explaining my situation to distrokid and Spotify, but they don't believe me and insist that I've knowingly used artificial streaming. I'm hoping my music/account doesn't get taken down.
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.
they removed my track today due to ''bot farm playlist'' i never used shit, a lot ppl got same issue. ofc small artists. never big.
Same here
It happened to me on Spotify with a bonus track on the Prepare to Meet Your Maker Soundtrack Recordings and CD Baby removed the entire album.
I had no notice that anything was happening
Got the same problem and Spotify flagged my song, the distributor doesn't want to help and then my song had a takedown on spotify after, 120.000 streams. (No, I haven't paid some sponsorshit or playlists), sadly now I do not know where to move for distribution and labels sucks
Fck streaming apps and distributors. Headache after headache.
Did you receive payout for that 120k streams?
@@mustaphasinglee6396 hell no
Thank you for the help, I almost lost my mind because of it, I was literrally thinking I would be banned because of that, but you just calm down my mind, preciate it.
i just woke up to an email from spotify saying they detected artificial streaming on my songs...i havent used/poid boosting service that uses bots to artificially boost my stream...how is it even possible for me to receive that email from spotify??? all ive done was share my links to my playlist of my songs in facebooks...never had i contacted any boosing service to give me a boost, or replied to anyone who asked me to inbox them...how do i prevent unwanted artificial stream from happening when im just promoting my songs in these facebook groups? should i stop promoting my playlist or individual songs from these facebook groups?
Do you use distrokid?
What about a surplus of streams coming from India but no playlist in sight? After talking to Spotify 6 times about the same issue it appears no one knows how to handle this issue. I wish it was just a playlist.
Happened to mine as well, have no idea why
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
Think my songs got put on some fake playlists and now my Fans Also Like is messed up! Do you know how to fix it?
Great question! The solution is twofold:
1. Letting the bad "bot" data fall out of your recent analytics by allowing time to pass
2. Providing Spotify with better data *aka **_good_** streams from either Facebook Ads or legitimate Playlisting Services*
I'm obviously biased, but the Spotify Playlisting service at the Indie Music Academy is second to none in terms of playlist and data quality. Try it out if you haven't already!
yes, forget about playlisting services for a while and focus on running ads, very carefully finding the right audience for you. it's going to take months and months, and it will cost you, but it can be done.
I will have listeners that will stream my song a lot some nights to fall asleep to. It's nothing irregular to have some people stream your song a lot on a playlist like sleep, but in this case I guess it was just coming from a bot playlist. always make sure to check where your streams are coming from
Spotify took down one of my songs because of this. And now it happened again. So we will see if they take this one down. Very frustrating.
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 .
How do I stop this? I don’t want to get kicked off of spotify
It happened to me a coupla days ago. I´m scared since I heard stories, that you can lose your spotify account? Is this true, what can I do against it?
So this happened to me and I even checked and it says streams coming from other peoples playlist and they are from Finland. What's odd is that when I click on the song, it doesn't display the name of the playlist that's likely being artificially boosted. This had happened to me before, and at that time, I could identify the playlist responsible for the influx of streams. I'm eager to resolve this issue, but Spotify for Artists isn't currently providing me with information about the sources of these streams.
Same here, just got about 50 streams from Helsinki, Finland in only a few hours. Playlist owner is WAVR AI and it seems like they have multiple accounts/playlists. Pretty sure the one I was added to was made in the last month and already has 50,000 followers. Spotify For Artists support had me report the playlist. Did anything get resolved on your end?
sameeee
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".
Good insights, thanks!!
Just had my album removed without warning due to this AI algorithm flagging random bot plays.
It’s extremely unfair that the artist is punished by having its music removed! Furious! 😡😡😡
It seems that many artist are innocent they havent initiated fake streams. It is possible that sporify's enemy is doing this fake streams. How can Spotify consider Artist responsible for fake streams. Because , there are 4 to 5 possibility to every case . Also, it seems many artist are innocent. It is done by Spotify's enemy. Artist should raise this point on social media.
Definitely an interesting theory!
Has anyone gotten a strike for this? Just had this happen and concerned about that - thanks!
Yep my music keeps getting added to these stupid Playlists and it's worrying me that my music will get deleted, btw I have not done anything to be added to these playlists! 😭
Does buying fake streams spoil the algorithm if I upload another song that is new will it not grow please tell me?
Looking at the name of the user and the name of the second playlist, I think it's a restaurant's playlist. The username translates roughly to Restaurant Mr. Elephant, and the playlist name is roughly Mr. Elephant's Playlist. Not sure if the restaurant was trying playlists out and ultimate didn't use that one, but seems like that could be the case here.
Thus just happened to me. An absolute JOKE.
is this a problem with spotify? i have to do something?
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
We just had this happen to us. We had two songs added to playlists and our distributor kindly paused every single song on every single platform 😅 today we got an email to say apparently despite being paused our music still got offline streams which im not sure how thats possible or what im supposed to fo aboit it.
Wow that’s really frustrating. Is it still happening?
@@IndieMusicAcademy so we unpauser last Friday and so far no notices or anything
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.
I’m going through the same thing but I got a strike for it. I have 650k+ monthly listeners, with my top song that is Bury The Light which has almost 90 million streams, but one of my lesser listened to songs got a random spike in streams in October for one day and I got a strike for it just now. And I noticed today that another one of my lesser listened to tracks just got a random spike today and I’m worried that will lead to a second strike. I’ve never paid for any sort of promotional services, and so what am I supposed to do about this? Spotify support isn’t helping and it doesn’t seem like there’s any contingency for random unsolicited playlist adds. Hopefully Spotify sees how this is negatively affecting lots of people out of their control and does something about this before peoples accounts get deleted.
Yea similar situation for me. I’ve had two strikes for the same song in 1 month. I used a promo service or two 3 years ago when I didn’t know about this racket. They’re either going to need to change the system or they are doing it on purpose to earn money through finds and kick off small artists. If they continue this policy with out deleting the bad playlists etc we will all leave. I will not remain a listener if my artist page is suspended. Good luck!
How do you check if you have a strike??
This happened to me for about 5 songs and got detected as bitter streams by Spotify and now I have a strike
yeah, this happened to me and spotify took my song down and I can't upload it anywhere now. I didn't even run any paid ads or anything at that stage. Pretty frustrating
AMAZING VIDEO BRO THANKS FOR SHARING AND BTW I LOVE ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME HELL YEAHHHHHH ***IN THE VOICE OF METALLICAS LEAD SINGER*** AND NO I DONT KNOW HIS NAME LOL BECAUSE I HAVE A TERRIBLE MEMORY AND AM TOO LAZY TO GOOGLE IT LOL PEACE!
I dont Know whats Happend with me , because in normal slide have a count normaly never down. And when i will check streams of music was freezed and i loss 400 streams please help me
Something i don't understand. When i started to distribute my music i didn't know about bot playlists. After one year one of my friends pitched my song to these playlisters it went well of course. Five playlists and Spotify paid royalties, second time i did it myself and they paid again. So now I'm confused because every bot city people talking about has already appeared on my Spotify for artists profile so i realized about 90% of streams are fake but why Spotify paid it? and why other people songs are removed by Spotify? Do Spotify use bots as well in their algorithms?😢
As long as my numbers go up I wouldn't mind.
Until Spotify removes your track or even better, ban you 😀
@@johncombo But what should we do for such things
Thank you very much it was extremely helpful!!!
Its crazy. Something/ somebody is putting fake streams from country’s i have almost 0 listeners on my song. I didn’t pay for guaranteed streams or have anything to do with it. But yess my song is now offline and spotify is punishing me for it. If it stays like this we all need to go away from this streaming platform. They litterly are ruining it for every small artist last year…
Did they finally take you off the list?
Its really BS Spotify says you probably paid for some playlist promotion and I absolutely didn’t and they took my album down. No appeal process or anything. Totally unfair.
I always see something like on my dashboard
Hi, my first song recntly been added to a few playlists i suspect are fake and got alot of streams from them, i think the majority of streams for the realese by now. do you know if theres any action i can take against it? maybe report it somehow? couldnt find in spotify for artists anything about it. and since its most of my streams im afraid i might get banned or something even thogh i had nothing to do with it :/ anyways thanks for the help with everything :)
I get fake listeners from canada, argentina, usa, brasil and some of like that countries. I didn't pay for it but still my song on the list. I don't even see the list. Damn spotify.
I just got done dealing with a scammer (paid promotion) and saw a similar spike with one of my songs. I should be happy about the numbers, but I know they’re fake so I’m not. Feels like my song is tainted now.
This is happening to me right now. I’m doing all I can to get a just outcome, and have my music reinstated on Spotify. It’s wrong for so many reasons.
Man, did you happen to see your "saves" count in that video?
😱 not my favorite number... lol
This is why im not gonna release on streaming apps. Its just one more problem to worry about. Fck that.
Don't know how you think anyone's gonna hear it but do you
Bro recording on floppy disk
Would not call them test for bot scams, they put other songs within them as a form of camo to hide the song they are botting.
No offensive. Your promotion website is really great, but ironically it’s still a number game. Like what you said in the description at the website to do whatever for streams. All these streams from playlists even though they’re from real and organic audiences it still affects the algorithm 😢
This has been happening to 3 of my tracks, except they are not on any playlists, and its been going on for almost 2 weeks.. I just watched in my account my 'people listening now' count went up from 0 to over 1000, and back down to 0 in a matter of minutes, I assume this is when all the plays happened, really weird and I wish it would stop, hopefully it stops soon.
Any updates? - from this
Like what do we even do fr it’s not our fault and we have no control it’s infuriating
I need help about it. ...................
SBOTify
actaully a lot of streams are by bot playlists and it wont be flagged. plays are not an indication of success people , spotify doesnt pay artists and spotify is the last stinky desperate fart of a dying corpse. please purchase an artists music and downlaod where possible .
Thanlyou
I hate this shit. What if somebody else pays for bots on your song? How can you control that?!
that's what i want to know because it just happened to me without any of my knowledge. i lowkey told the workers at spotify they need to have someone do something, because i will be unhappy if penalized. a lot of us work honestly and get unfairly caught up in this bullcrap scam.
Do you get penalized when that happens?
Thankfully you only get penalized (and banned from Spotify) if you exhibit a long-term pattern of using bots. Once or twice won't hurt your music profile.
@@IndieMusicAcademyI had two of those spikes for a single song. I never paid any services, now this song got banned from Spotify. So, once or twice CAN hurt your music profile indeed.
The business model is fucked up from the start.
Can u help me
Is everyone affected distributed by distrokid?
Yes
This is happening to me too! Do you think changing distributor but keeping isrc for songs the same would help? Or would it be better to start fresh as a new artist with a new distributor?
Go direct to consumer they only want to pay signed artist because they are in bed with their labels
Yes
yes. spotify owns part of distrokid so its all very interesting