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What can I do about streaming fraud and why did I receive a fine?
What can I do about streaming fraud and why did I receive a fine?
Theresa avatar
Written by Theresa
Updated this week

Are your tracks played on a continuous loop over several days?

Or have you bought guaranteed streams?

If the streaming services notice irregularities or unusual activities like these and others, it can result in the release being marked as "fraudulent" and deleted from the platforms.

This means that the streaming services noticed unnaturally generated streams - e.g. streams generated by bots or played in a continuous loop. Furthermore, services like Spotify do not pay out these artificial streams! This also explains why you may see more streams in the trends than you ultimately get paid out.

We as a distributor also have no way or intention to claim these payouts on artificial streams from Spotify.

Our streaming partners work diligently to ensure streams are legitimate, meaning they reflect genuine user listening intent. If a service finds that you (or a third party hired by you or on your behalf) have boosted play counts through any automated, deceptive, fraudulent or other invalid means (digital bots, "click farms", payment for placement on playlists, etc.), the worst case can be that the streaming service permanently removes your entire catalog.

We are committed to ensure non-violating artists are not impacted by artificial streaming penalties in any way. When Spotify detects artificial streaming activity, we - the distributor - get charged and will forward the costs to the relevant users.

Tracks that have artificially generated at least 90% of the streams in a month will be subject to fines.

It's best to always check in advance any marketing services or invitations that seem too good to be true with regard to the above-mentioned points very carefully.

Spotify has created these informative articles on this topic:

https://artists.spotify.com/help/article/third-party-services-that-guarantee-streams

You can also check here whether a playlist is using bots:

If you notice irregularities in the streaming figures for one of your releases, please proceed as follows:

• contact the store support and report the irregularities for your release.

If your release is on a suspicious playlist, please also report the playlist to the store and • • contact the playlist operator with a request to remove the track from the playlist. You can report the playlist to Spotify using this form.

• contact our support ([email protected]) and report that you have detected irregularities for your release. Please include the GTIN of the release and the link to the playlist. You can find the GTIN under ‘My Music’ > Release > the long number next to ‘GTIN’.


Take a look at our services, if you are looking for trustworthy promotion and marketing partners.

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