Music Streaming Fraud Guide For Artists

Music streaming fraud is a growing issue that can derail a career. Learn how to recognize, prevent, and protect from fraudulent practices with this music streaming fraud guide for artists.

Music Streaming Fraud Guide For Artists

by Chris Robley via Reverbnation Blog

The music industry changes fast. 

That means that novel opportunities and new challenges often appear together on the horizon. 

And in recent years, the rapid growth of streaming revenue has brought with it a quieter downside: Streaming fraud.

It’s here, it’s there, it’s everywhere.

THE MASSIVE STREAMING ISSUE TAKING DOWN INDEPENDENT ARTISTS

This growing epidemic isn’t just about a few bad actors. Streaming fraud impacts everyone in the ecosystem, including artists and labels who play by the rules. 

That’s worth repeating: Streaming fraud hurts every artist, even those who don’t engage (knowingly or otherwise) in bad behavior. 

Should we say it a third time? You NEED to understand this because sometimes even innocent artists become collateral damage. 

So in this article, we’ll break down what streaming fraud is, why it’s so pervasive, the harm it causes, and how you can safeguard your career and music against the fallout.

What is streaming fraud?

Streaming fraud involves artificially inflating play-counts on music platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, and more. 

STREAMING FRAUD IS ALSO CALLED:

• Artificial streaming
• Abnormal streaming 
• Store-end fraud
• Streaming manipulation

To put this problem in simple terms: If the stream isn’t performed by an actual human, it’s probably streaming fraud. If the stream is performed by a human who doesn’t intend to listen to the music, it might be streaming fraud. 

And to be clear, we’re not talking about accidentally leaving a playlist running at home while you go to the grocery store; but rather, a series of activities that are primarily meant to boost the play-count of a track, playlist, artist, or album, rather than actively engage with that music in a meaningful way. 

What are those problematic activities?

Streaming fraud can come in several forms:

BOT STREAMS

Automated programs or “bots” that repeatedly play tracks or playlists. 

Because a computer can perform tasks that humans can’t (like listening to music 24 hours a day), bots can — if undetected — dramatically inflate the engagement metrics for a track or video. 

CLICK FARMS 

This term gets used a bit loosely. It can mean a group of people who are paid to stream songs en masse. It can also imply an operation that relies on numerous bots and devices to inflate streaming numbers. Or a combination of both. 

According to analysis from Beatdapp, one bot farm had more than 53,000 different user accounts that each listened to a particular track once. 

According to Beatdapp co-CEO Andrew Batey: 

“It’s the opposite of what you would expect in normal fraud. Normal fraud you see a bunch of users driving lots of plays, not thousands of users driving one play.” 

LOOPED PLAYBACK

This is when tracks are added to a playlist for the purposes of continuous play. It can also take the form of humans leaving a song on repeat even when they’re not listening. 

TRUNCATED PLAY

This involves repeatedly stopping the stream beyond the point at which that play is monetized. 

For instance, if the rights-holder earns revenue after 30 seconds of continuous play, the fraudster will stop the track at 31 seconds and move on to another track or replay the current track. 

OTHER INAUTHENTIC TACTICS

There are lots of ways that people attempt to game the system, including playing music with the volume off, using extra accounts within a Premium plan to boost particular tracks, or even hacking someone else’s user account to drive streams. 

PAYING FOR GUARANTEED STREAMS

If you employ a promo service to boost your streams, you should know they are likely using some of these same fraudulent tactics listed above.

This is particularly true for any promo service that guarantees specific results or stream numbers.

If a promo company is committing fraud on your behalf, your music will still suffer the consequences we’ll outline further below. 

COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT

Stealing someone else’s composition or recording, and sometimes manipulating it (sped-up, slowed-down, un-authorized remix, mashup, etc.), then collecting the royalties from associated streaming activity. 

This is also called “carbon copying” or “ghosting tracks.” It’s also called… theft. 

The goal of all these tactics? 

The purpose of manipulating streaming metrics is either to collect unearned royalties, create the illusion of popularity, or — in some unfortunate scenarios — to “help” an artist or friend without realizing your actions will actually hurt them. 

And again, even if your music streams aren’t being inflated, this fraud hurts you too. 

More on that later.

Why streaming fraud happens

The root causes of streaming fraud often come down to pressure and incentives:

1. Pressure to compete

Indie artists face immense competition. With over 100,000 songs uploaded daily to streaming platforms, many feel the need to stand out by any means necessary.

2. Misperception of algorithmic rewards

In actuality, platforms favor songs with quality engagement, giving those tracks better placement in discovery playlists. 

But many artists mistake high stream-counts for quality engagement. This creates an incentive to chase “vanity metrics” rather than meaningful fan attention.

3. Financial temptation

For some, the promise of increased royalties or attracting the attention of labels and sponsors makes streaming fraud seem like a shortcut to success.

4. Shielding ego

Artists are under a lot public scrutiny, and we can be lured to boost our streaming numbers in order to look more successful than we are, simply to protect our egos from our own insecurity and fear of judgement. 

But the most common culprit is…

Despite the four reasons above, which all are driven by an artist or label’s desire to see their own music succeed, it’s widely reported that the most pervasive form of streaming fraud is committed not by the artists or labels, but by 3rd-parties seeking monetary gain at the expense of others. 

According to Bloomberg:

The vast majority of the fraud Beatdapp detects, 80% of it, according to co-CEO and co-founder Andrew Batey, is motivated by financial gains, rather than gaming the charts or helping an artist capture more attention to break through.

“It’s people that aren’t even in the music industry,” he said. “These are people that are just loading music across the platforms. They’re targeting 10, 15, 20 platforms at a time. They’re doing small amounts on each one of these songs that they’ve uploaded so that they don’t get caught.”

How streaming fraud hurts the industry (and you!)

First, for the sake of argument, let’s assume you ARE engaged in some form of streaming fraud. (You’re not, right?)

Here’s what Spotify wants you to know, if you are caught inflating streams: 

Those streams do not earn royalties.

Those streams do not count toward public stream numbers or charts.

Those streams do not positively influence recommendation algorithms.

Whether knowingly or not, if you engage in tactics to boost artificial streams, or pay a promo service to artificially boost your tracks, or have fans and friends artificially boosting your streams, you may face consequences. 

Check out Spotify’s Terms of Service if you’re curious. 

The most common consequences for streaming fraud include:

Account suspension: Platforms are becoming more sophisticated at detecting fraud and can suspend user accounts permanently.

Playlist removal: If a playlist is receiving botted streams, it can be removed.

Removal from playlists: Algorithmic playlists can remove tracks if they suspect fraudulent activity on your song. 

Removal of your track from DSPs: The artificially-boosted track can be removed from platforms, temporarily or permanently. And this happens at a larger scale than you may imagine. Back in 2021, for instance, Spotify booted more than half a million tracks from a single distributor’s catalog. 

Removal of your catalog: Even worse, your entire catalog of music could be be removed from streaming platforms. 

Cancelled account with your distributor: You may find the relationship with your distributor severed if your tracks have been artificially streamed. 

Loss of royalties: When fraud is detected, platforms will obviously withhold related royalties, but larger catalog removals will impact your overall earning potential.

Legal action: Depending on the scale, severity, and frequency of the fraud, you could risk facing legal consequences, fines, or even jail-time.

“But I didn’t commit streaming fraud!”

Here’s where things get complicated. There are many credible stories where legitimate artists are accused of fraud, and they’ve found their music removed from various platforms despite engaging in no such activity themselves.

There may or may not be available remedies in this event, depending on your distributor. But it seems that one potential cause of the takedowns or warnings is that these artists’ tracks had been added to certain playlists with bot activity.  

Sadly, this puts pressure on individual artists to keep an eye on our streaming metrics and report any suspicion spikes in streaming activity to the platform, label, or distributor  — even when we’re not privy to all the data. 

It’d be much preferable to honest artists and labels if platforms that detected inflated streaming activity could limit the punishments to the end-user, not the artist who unknowingly falls victim to bot streams. 

Many DSPs do have the ability to detect inflated streams, of course. They do close down problematic playlists and user accounts. Some, like Deezer and Spotify, have changed how and when they pay artists to disincentivize inflated streaming activity. 

In addition, they attempt to prevent payouts for fraudulent streams. It would be nice, however, if those efforts and protections were sufficient, since artists aren’t experts in this area, and have lots of other things to manage in their career besides policing platforms’ user-activity. 

You earn LESS because of streaming fraud

As I’ve said, even if you’re not engaging in fraudulent practices, you’re still affected.

Every artist. Every label. Everywhere. 

Because streaming fraud undermines one of the foundations of streaming remuneration, which is the assumption that pay is based on actual human listener engagement and intent. 

Streaming fraud leads to unfair royalty distribution

Streaming platforms operate on a shared revenue pool. 

Fraudulent streams divert money away from legitimate artists, reducing payouts for everyone. Every fake stream is money stolen from an artist who earned it through genuine fan engagement. 

For instance, this playlister cost legitimate artists and labels as much as $1 million in Spotify revenue. Another man got jail time after earning at least $300k from fake streams of tracks that infringed on existing copyright. 

And in 2023, Bloomberg reported that 10% of all music streaming activity was fraud, which means up to $2 billion was diverted away from legitimate rights holders for legitimate streaming activity. That same article also claims that up to 30% of activity on mid-sized streaming platforms is fraudulent. 

The less streaming fraud that happens in the world, the more money you will earn when your fans stream your music. 

Botted artists damage their reputations

As you’ve seen, even innocent artists can be penalized if inflated streams are detected on their music. Whether you’re “guilty” or not, the suspicion and stigma can follow you and your music for years. 

“Oh, that musician? They’re the artist that didn’t have real fans, right? They probably weren’t very good, so why would they be good now?”

Long-term career harm

Fake streams don’t equate to real fans. Artists who rely on inflated numbers miss out on building genuine connections with listeners—connections that lead to concert ticket sales, merch purchases, and sustainable careers.

So not only are there immediate consequences to streaming fraud. There are also opportunity costs, because you’ve engaged in an activity that takes your focus off of authentic engagement and good music marketing. 

Muddying up your data

Lastly, a bunch of fake plays could yield inflated stream-counts with LOW engagement. 

What Spotify really wants to see is: Not how many people heard your song, but how many listeners went on to save it, share it, add it, and listen again. 

Feeding algorithms a bunch of bad data from fake listeners is hurting your chances of reaching REAL fans on that same platform.

Why is streaming fraud so difficult to solve?

Some music platforms say there’s no easy blanket solution because of such large volumes of data. Plus, as new protection measures are deployed, fraudsters adapt and develop new methods to circumvent detection systems. 

It’s also true that the scale of the problem is massive, so to rip the bandaid off would be… painful. 

It’s an industry-wide issue, and almost every metric could be inflated here: A track’s stream count, an artist’s popularity, a label’s true market share, a platform’s actual user stats, a distributor’s catalog size, and more. 

Adjusting those figures downwards would have its own consequences in terms of reputation, valuation, and influence.  

The scenario above is more of a presumption than an accusation, but remember, according to Beatdapp’s analysis, streaming activity on some mid-sized platforms was almost 30% fraudulent in 2023. 

That’s not to say the industry isn’t trying to tackle the issue. They are. 

For instance, the MFFA is a coalition of distributors and music platforms trying to eradicate fraud — and it includes DSPs like Spotify and Amazon Music. 

At the same time, certain solutions feel more performative than substantive. For instance, Spotify says it will charge distributors a $10 penalty for any track that has more than 90% fake streams, in an apparent attempt to dissuade fraud among emerging artists, while making it easy for more popular artists to stay below that threshold, since those artists’ tracks inevitably have a significant proportion of legit streaming volume to pad the inflated activity. 

But the inevitable question that most artists are left asking is: “So 89% fraud is okay?”

How to protect yourself from streaming fraud

The good news? You don’t have to fall into the trap of streaming fraud in order to succeed. 

Here’s how to build streaming success on solid ground:

1. MONITOR YOUR STREAMING ACTIVITY FOR ANOMALIES SUCH AS:

• A sudden spike in streams. If you see a bunch of new activity on a random day when you don’t have a new release, a new sync placement, new marketing campaign, or a big playlist placement, it might be suspicious activity. 
• A spike in streams unexpectedly coming from just one category in your “source of streams” data within Spotify for Artists.
• A random “top city.” Getting a large amount of streams from towns where you’re not touring, marketing, or already popular? It might be fishy. 
• Sudden and short-lived follower growth.

2. REPORT SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY TO YOUR LABEL, DISTRIBUTOR, OR THE DSP

For instance, Spotify has created this playlist reporter. 

If you did hire a promo company to boost your streams, stop! And consider providing the company’s info to the DSPs. 

3. VET PLAYLISTS TO DETERMINE IF THEY’RE LEGIT

If you have access to a service or tool that shows you 3rd-party playlist data, you’ll want to check on a handful of things. When it comes to playlists, there are tons of red flags to watch for. 

We’ve got a whole separate article to show you how to tell if a playlist is botted or otherwise problematic.

4. FOCUS ON ORGANIC GROWTH & QUALITY MARKETING

• Create compelling content: Regularly release music and visuals that resonate with your actual audience. Then get THOSE fans to stream your music. 
• Engage directly with fans: Use that good content, great songs, social engagement, email lists, and live events to have an ongoing relationship with your audience that isn’t just about streaming the latest track, but dedicated listening for years to come. 
• Seek genre-fit playlists: Submit your music to curators who genuinely care about your style and audience.
• Targeted Advertising: Use music advertising to reach listeners who are likely to become real fans. The connection with fans should come first, then the request for them to stream a track. 

5. VET PROMOTIONAL SERVICES CAREFULLY (AND AVOID MOST OF THEM!)

You’ll hear it a lot about this topic: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Invest in relationships, not shortcuts. 

Avoid any service that promises guaranteed streams or playlist placement. 

Services that instead promise consideration, pitching tools, and access? They may be legit — though it’s best to still exercise caution. 

But services that guarantee specific results? Scams.

Companies promising to help you go viral are often scams too. If a service requires upfront payment without transparency, it’s probably a scam. If the promo service has a crappy website and no contact info for support, it’s probably a scam.

Lastly, if the person or company reaches out to YOU, proceed with caution. Most reputable and effective promoters are so busy that they’re not DMing strangers. 

You’re now equipped to avoid streaming fraud

Streaming fraud is a problem that affects everyone in the music industry, but by understanding its risks and focusing on authentic growth, you can rise above the noise. Real fans are what drive success—not fake numbers.

So take the time to grow your audience organically. It’s not just the right thing to do—it’s the best way to build a catalog of music that STAYS online for fans to enjoy for years to come.

Speaking of building a lifelong catalog of music, check out ReverbNation. Premium membership now includes UNLIMITED distribution and UNLIMITED promotion!