If we talk about artificial streams, we must remind you that They don't exist magic solutions so that your content reaches more people. This means that if you find services that guarantee “more plays” or “greater reach” of your music in exchange for money, it's very likely fraud, which can cost you and your label dearly.
What do I do if my releases are receiving artificial streams?
We know that there is a possibility that your music will receive artificial streams without you or your team having purchased these fraudulent services, so from Random Sounds we share some tips to detect possible cases of artificial streams in advance.
Daily review of your apps for Artists:
Both Spotify (Spotify for Artists), Apple Music (Apple Music for Artists), Amazon Music (Amazon Music for Artists) and Deezer (Deezer for Creators) are applications so that artists and their teams can view statistics from their catalog in real time.
It's important that you or your team check the numbers daily for unusual stream activity. Some possible cases are:
1 - Unusual Peaks
The easiest way to detect artificial streams is to find unusual peaks in your music consumption. An example of how we see this phenomenon on Spotify for Artists:
2 - Streams Source: Other Streams Sources
If you go to Spotify for Artists, choose the option Audience and you filter the Segmentation by Other, the number of streams should be quite low. If, when applying this filter, you find a very large number of streams, they are likely to be artificial streams.
3 - Unusual Countries or Cities
If you detect that a foreign country, in which you did not promote or detect virality, appears as one of the main consumption territories for your music, it is likely to be fraudulent.
4 - Many listeners, few followers
It's also very easy to detect when an artist has a very uneven percentage between monthly listeners and number of followers. This is often a clear example of the fact that listeners are artificial.
Alert your distributor's support
If you detect unusual activity in your catalog, it's important to alert your distributor's support to the irregularities you detected.
In Random Sounds, the procedure we recommend is to block the country where the artificial streams come from in the affected song or release, so your release will not continue accumulating violations within the platforms.
Consequences and solutions of artificial streamings
If your release is affected by artificial streams and you don't do anything about it, it's very likely that your publisher will remove your release from the platforms.
This is because digital platforms are very strict in preventing fraud. Even Spotify has already started charging $10 fines for each artificial streaming violation. In other words, if you have 10 songs with artificial streaming violations in a month, you will receive a fine of 100 dollars through your distributor.
In addition, music platforms are removing and blocking entire profiles of artists or record labels that often receive large percentages of artificial streams.
