There is currently an article spreading like wildfire that accuses music streaming giant Spotify of cooking their numbers in the form of fake accounts in a maneuver that keeps them from paying royalties to their extensive artist database. And if the DMN article was the fire, then this Vulture editorial which ran the day after the 4th of July and this Music Business Worldwide article posted in August of 2016 were the matches Smokey the Bear warns kids about.
Naturally, Spotify is distancing themselves from all claims of shady spamming.
“We do not and have never created ‘fake’ artists and put them on Spotify playlists. Categorically untrue, full stop,” a Spotify spokesperson told Billboard via email. “We pay royalties — sound and publishing — for all tracks on Spotify, and for everything we playlist. We do not own rights, we’re not a label, all our music is licensed from rightsholders and we pay them — we don’t pay ourselves.”
The reoccurring accusation within all three articles is users would “game” Spotify’s system; creating cover songs of well-known artists (with fake names) and supposedly, it’s all done internally. The same Spotify rep also addressed this particularly gray area; acknowledging it that while possible, they don’t condone it under their watch whatsoever.
“As we grow there will always be people who try to game the system. We have a team in place to constantly monitor the service to flag any activity that could be seen as fraudulent or misleading to our users.”
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It’s reported that Spotify has more than 140 million users, unequivocally making them the largest player in the biz that includes Apple Music, Pandora and JAY-Z’s TIDAL.
I do t get it. So they “shut down rumors” without actually addressing the specific accusations set against them bc they say so? Cmon hhdx. Plus we know Spotify garners streams from this site among others. A better title would be “attempts to defend themselves.”
It should say “denies” not “shoots down” like you conveniently use for certain artists and brands.
we need some streaming police or something to regulate all this fake bullshit , drake carrer has being build around the non proof streams and fake downloads, also jay z with his payd platinum plaques
Yeah… I know of several artist accounts that are fake and have uploaded music from actual artists.