Spotify recently removed a song by an independent band in Singapore for alleged “fraudulent streaming activity”.
The streaming service seemingly detected the streams of the song as paid streams, rather than organic plays.
However, the band claimed that this happened because the track landed in a playlist with bots.
The group took to Instagram to air its grievances, saying that it is unfair for Spotify to punish artists for something out of their control.
It also hopes that the post can create awareness for other independent artists who may face similar situations.
On Wednesday (14 Feb), Singapore-based band Reserate shared that Spotify took down its song ‘Doomsday’ due to “fraudulent streaming activity”.
In the post, Reserate explained that someone had added the song to a playlist with the title ‘Indie Pop’ that had more than 80,000 followers back in December 2023.
According to the band’s Facebook profile, it identifies as a “Prog-Nu-Metalcore” band.
Following the addition to the playlist, Reserate claims it saw a “sudden spike” in the streams of the song by around 7,000 to 10,000 plays.
“Little did we know they were all botted streams,” it wrote.
Spotify had seemingly detected those streams as fraudulent “paid-for” streams.
“We as a band are supportive of this move,” said the band, referring to Spotify’s clampdown on bots. “However, it doesn’t make sense for the artist to be punished for fraudulent streams they were not involved in by taking down their track. Why aren’t the playlisters being punished?” Reserate questioned.
Asserting that it has never paid for any streams or playlist placements for its music, Reserate urged Spotify and other streaming platforms and music distributors to find a better way to combat streaming bots instead of “punishing the artists”.
The band highlighted that there is no way for an artist to prevent others from adding their music to playlists with streaming bots, besides reporting the playlist itself.
Source: @reserateband on Instagram
However, this does not prevent the creators of such playlists from making another one.
By sharing its experience, Reserate hopes to raise awareness about the issue as it may affect many other independent artists around the world.
It emphasised that it is “truly unfair” for independent artists to have their songs, which they “painstakingly” created, taken down over something they have no control over.
Speaking to MS News, Reserate’s guitarist, 29-year-old Kevyn Casimir Oliver, clarified that the group did not suspect there was anything wrong with the sudden increase of plays on ‘Doomsday’ as the ‘Indie Pop’ playlist it landed on had more than 80,000 followers.
“It would make sense to gain a few thousand more streams from a playlist with so many followers,” he said.
After they received news of the track’s removal from Spotify, the members deduced that it was due to ‘Indie Pop’ as it was the only playlist the song was on.
They also saw from their analytics that the new streams were specifically from Finland.
The guitarist added that he has seen other musicians discussing similar issues on online forums such as Reddit.
“We feel that it’s unfair that the platform took down our song for something we had no control over. In fact, thanks to this situation it makes sense now that anyone can just jeopardise an artist’s algorithm, songs and career just by buying bots and throwing the streams to that artist,” he remarked.
“Now we just hope that, somehow, Spotify can reinstate our song, and that streaming services and music distribution platforms can find a better way to combat bot streams.”
MS News has reached out to Spotify for comment.
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Featured image adapted from @reserateband on Instagram and Instagram.
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