What is Artificial Streaming and How To Avoid It



What is Artificial Streaming and How To Avoid It



CAUSES OF ARTIFICIAL STREAMS

The streaming services work diligently to ensure streams reflect genuine user listening intent. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. AS can result from any of the following causes:
  1. Fraudulent behavior (when someone is trying to increase their stream count and/or obtain more royalties).
  2. Naively using a seemingly legitimate marketing/playlisting service which in fact uses unauthorized methods to generate streams.
  3. Being placed on a fraudulent playlist without your consent. Fraudsters services will often do this in order to convince artists that they can increase their streams.
  4. “Ricochet” AS when fraudsters play random tracks in order to appear like normal users. In such cases, you or your client are not the instigators of the AS, but random victims.
  5. Fans seeking to increase the popularity or financial gains of an artist.




Important consequences of the above:
  • Whereas #1 and #2 are the results of an artists' actions, #3, #4 and #5 typically happen without their involvement. Nevertheless, it is all considered AS and the DSP will deduct these streams from the asset's stream count and not pay any royalties for them.
  • Because some AS is not the result of an action by your artist, you cannot therefore assert that no AS has happened simply because your artist states that they have not engaged in any potentially fraudulent promotional campaigns. Your artist may be telling the truth and yet AS has occurred!




CONSEQUENCES OF ARTIFICIAL STREAMING & WHY IT IS HARMFUL

Regardless of the cause of your reported AS, the result is the same in all cases:
  • The DSP will withhold royalties for all such AS.
  • The related tracks' streaming count will not be incremented for any AS.
  • The related tracks will be blacklisted from all official playlists.
  • Damage your recommendations (by associating you to completely unrelated artists appearing on the same AS playlist).
  • The track and/or artist may be demoted from all recommendation algorithms (an equivalent of shadow banning on social media).
  • Provide misleading data about your actual audience and hurt your credibility within the industry.
  • Waste of money that could instead have been spent on legitimate promotional efforts.
  • The DSP may take down the associated release(s) from their service, in the case of Apple, Pandora, and sometimes Spotify, this is a permanent takedown.
  • Spotify only: for any track that Spotify identifies as being significantly abused, Spotify will charge Apollo a 10 Euro fee. Our policy is to pass this fee on to you.
  • We may take down and permanently block any track found to be engaging in AS either repeatedly and/or in a significantly high manner. 
  • Related royalties for such tracks could have royalties withheld.
  • We will terminate all accounts found to be repeatedly engaging in AS.



How to avoid cases of artificial streaming:
  • If you’re using a marketing service guaranteeing streams, it is most likely fraudulent and you should ask this service to stop their campaign immediately. The longer the campaign runs, the more likely they are to incur fines and ruin their ranking in recommendations.
  • If you’re running an ad campaign (for example Spotify or Facebook ads), they should gather proof of these campaigns (screenshots, links, etc.) and send you these in order to file an appeal with the DSP.
  • (Spotify only) If your artist sees that they are receiving a lot of streams from a playlist that seems suspect, have them report this playlist to Spotify using this form (LINK: https://artists.spotify.com/c/playlist-reporter). Such playlists will likely have some/all of the following characteristics:
  • Hundreds of tracks of very disparate genres
  • Very few saves
  • Some greyed out/unavailable tracks
  • Most of the artists will be unknown with very few Monthly Listeners
  • A creator who has created a lot of other playlists with the above characteristics


Educational links:

Video: What is artificial streaming? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTXO0QNEXgE)

Article: What is artificial streaming? (https://artists.spotify.com/artificial-streaming)

Article: Learn more about services that guarantee streams (https://support.spotify.com/uk/artists/article/third-party-services-that-guarantee-streams/)

Article: How artificial streaming ruins an artist's recommendations and discovery (https://www.music-tomorrow.com/blog/the-negative-impact-of-fake-streams-on-artists-algorithmic-performance)

©2025RICK MORENO & PAUL O’DONNELL@ApolloDistro