Think your music's been added to a Spotify playlist scam? Do this!

Think your music's been added to a Spotify playlist scam? Do this!

Chances are, if you’ve landed on this video, it’s because you noticed a spike in your stats on Spotify, you think they might be from a bot playlist and you are worried that your song, or worse, your entire artist profile, may be banned from Spotify. I know I was!

You’re also probably hoping they might be real, and they very well could be. I do wish that for you!

Either way, you want to be safe and cover your bases to protect yourself and your music… and that’s exactly what I’m going to be covering in this video.

Last week I noticed a HUGE spike in my listeners/streaming stats on Spotify, and I had no idea where the were coming from. As exciting as it was to open up the Spotify app on my phone and see that 62 people were listening to my music RIGHT NOW I was more scared than anything, because I'm well aware of the risks that independent artists face when their music (unfortunately) lands itself on a Spotify Playlist Bot Scam.

I immediately went to my community, and a good handful of them had the same sage advice:

Reach out to my distributor, and to Spotify. Which is precisely what I did!

Luckily for me: this wasn't the result of fraudulent streaming, but I still wanted to share the steps I took with you, so you are able to see one of the ways that you can help protect yourself and your music from falling prey to these scams, and hopefully avoid disaster! In my opinion: it's better to be safe, and take precautionary steps if you have any kind of uncertainty surrounding the legitimacy of your streams.

What is spotify going to do about this problem? Artists are being penalised for involuntarily being added to bot playlists, and we have very little control over it. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below?

If you want to learn more about these bot playlists and why they are such a danger for artists, especially emerging indie artists, @AndrewSouthworth has a great video on this subject here:    • Exposing a Spotify Playlist Scam  

Thank you so much for spending some time with me today! If you enjoyed this video, don’t forget to subscribe! Thanks so much for watching and I’ll see you in the next one :)

00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:30 - Growth or a Scam?
00:01:28 - What happened to my spotify streaming numbers?
00:02:10 - Investigating my Spotify streaming numbers.
00:02:30 - My CD Baby UGC Ad, did it impact my numbers?
00:03:40 - Questionable Playlist Add
00:03:55 - What do I do next?
00:04:37 - Live chat with Spotify for Artists' Customer Support
00:07:25 - The results are in!
00:08:10 - What is Spotify going to do about this problem?