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Artificial streaming and paid 3rd-party services that guarantee streams

Paid 3rd-party services that guarantee streams aren’t legitimate.

3rd-party promotional services that advertise streams in return for payment violate our terms & conditions, and using them could result in your music being removed from Spotify.

Any service that claims to offer guaranteed placement on playlists on Spotify in exchange for money are in violation of our terms & conditions, and they shouldn't be used.

Resources:

The consequences for using these services

When we identify confirmed cases of artificial streaming or stream manipulation, we take actions that may include the withholding of associated royalties, the correction of public streaming numbers, and measures to ensure the artist or song’s popularity is accurately reflected in our charts.

Depending on the severity of the artificial streaming detected, the song may also be removed from Spotify playlists.

We share monthly reports with labels and distributors about confirmed artificial streaming on our platform. Based on those reports, your distributor may take actions like issuing warnings or, in flagrant or repeated cases, removing your content from streaming services or suspending your account.

Spotify also reserves the right to remove manipulated content from the platform in the case of repeated or egregious artificial streaming.

If this happened to you but you believe your streams were earned authentically, you should share information with your distributor or label about the methods used to genuinely promote the content in question. They'll work with our team to review, and hopefully get the problem solved quickly.

You can also notify us directly about any suspicious playlists your music has been added to. We’ll then investigate further to see if the playlist has engaged in artificial streaming, before taking the appropriate action.

Report suspicious playlists your music has been added to

How Spotify protects against artificial streaming

An artificial stream is a stream that doesn't reflect genuine user listening intent, including any instance of attempting to manipulate Spotify by using automated processes (e.g. bots or scripts).

We put significant engineering resources and research into detecting, mitigating, and removing artificial streaming activity on Spotify so that nothing stands in the way of our mission of giving artists the opportunity to live off their art, and so that artists, songwriters, and rights holders are paid as fairly as possible for their work.

As part of these efforts, we conduct daily cleaning to ensure artificial streams are removed from public numbers in the Spotify app. This is essential to ensure a level playing field, where nobody is able to use artificial streaming to increase the perceived popularity of their music on Spotify.

The integrity of this is incredibly important to us because an illegitimate stream means there are honest, hardworking artists on the other side that can be impacted.

Spotify for Artists data and artificial streaming

Public metrics in the Spotify app — an artist’s monthly listener count or a track’s all-time stream count — are always adjusted to remove confirmed artificial streaming.

The impact of artificial streaming on an artist’s private Spotify for Artists data can vary: in some cases, we can remove confirmed artificial streams from your data before your Spotify for Artists dashboard refreshes; in other cases, you may still see artificial streaming spikes in your Spotify for Artists data, even though associated royalties may be withheld and public metrics adjusted.

In these cases, during the time period where artificial streaming is occurring, there will be a discrepancy between the accurate all-time stream number and the rest of the song data, which still includes some confirmed artificial streaming. You may also see discrepancies between the accurate monthly listener count and the rest of the audience data.

When there is a significant discrepancy, you will see a message on your release page or audience page in Spotify for Artists notifying you.

Artificial streaming charges

Spotify has introduced a new deterrent to combat artificial streaming, effective April 1, 2024, charging labels and distributors per track when flagrant artificial streaming is detected on their content. (This charge is only applied for very high rates of artificial streaming per track.)

Learn more about artificial streaming charges

We are able to fight artificial streaming once it's attempted on our platform, but the industry would be better off if bad actors were disincentivized from uploading content to Spotify and other streaming services in the first place.

We believe this will meaningfully deter labels and distributors from continuing to distribute the music of known bad actors that attempt to divert money from honest, hardworking artists, as well as deterring the bad actors themselves.

These charges will support our continued efforts to keep the industry and platform free from artificial streaming activity.

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