My song got botted without my consent and now I have a strike

[Renegade226]

My song was added to a botted playlist without my consent and the streams spiked into several thousands for a few days. I immediately contacted Spotify to report this and the advisor in chat said "everything seems ok, and there's nothing we can do, we cannot remove private playlists from our service"...then 3 months later Spotify issues a strike against my account for fake streams from that same song I tried to report.

Does anyone else have experience with this? And did they get the wrongful strike removed?

[Fitzy_140]

I got the same thing! Very frustrating 

[ThefleetingG]

The same thing happened to me yesterday, and I just had exactly the same conversation with Spotify last night. I have tried everything to get my song off the botted list - I contacted Spotify, contacted other artists on the list to try and find out how we got on it but have not found any contact info for whoever runs it. 

Spotify gives strikes to people put on these lists but doesn’t take down the playlist itself, which is the thing I don’t understand.

it seems the only thing I can do, is take down the track from Spotify and can only re-add it one day if the playlist goes away. If the playlist is there with the deleted track on it forever, I can never re-release the track on Spotify.

Does anyone have any better ideas? I am worried I will get a second strike if it stays on there.

[tinsleymusic]

Dealing with this same issue. I got in contact with Spotify but then they said the strike came from my distributor? I’m so confused. There is no way to protect yourself 100% from ending up on a botted playlist and we don’t deserve to be punished for it. Until there’s better regulation in place, this strike system is causing way more harm than good. 

[Renegade226]

No kidding! Immediately assuming that we're "paying for fake streams" rather than considering the very likely possibility that we were added to a random botted playlist without consent, and then summarily issuing strikes against emerging artists like us is very disappointing. Fake botted playlists like "wavz.ai" are harming the small artists because we don't yet have a large enough fanbase to cover the "noise" of these unsolicited fake playlist adds like medium-large artists do. 

I want to believe Spotify and Distrokid have the integrity to judiciously distinguish between artists willfully abusing fake streams vs honest musicians like us that get occasionally hurt by these botted AI playlist adds. Spotify should be targeting these fake AI playlists rather than summarily punishing artists without proof of paid streams. 

[maxevemusic]

Same here.... this is obviously happpening a lot!

[luvmonkey]

This is exactly what I'm dealing with. Same playlist WAVE.AI and other ones like SHEERAN'S CHOICE i don't know, the name changes

[DKH138]

I'm having to deal with the same BS. Got added to some random WAVE.AI playlists and now my songs are getting flagged. Spotify for Artists support are saying it's on DistroKid's side. DistroKid says that Spotify flagged it. Here I am stuck in the middle and don't have any control over the situation. It's just a bad policy and the small independent artists are the ones getting punished.

I believe my Distributor and it is on the Spotify side, but does anybody have a good support contact with Spotify that can actually help and look into the issue?

[VictorBorba]

I’m going through the same thing, I  have 650k+ monthly listeners but one of my lesser listened to songs got a random spike in streams in October for one day and I got a strike for it just now. And I noticed today that another one of my lesser listened to tracks just got a random spike today and I’m worried that will lead to a second strike. I’ve never paid for any sort of promotional services, and so what am I supposed to do about this? Spotify support isn’t helping and it doesn’t seem like there’s any contingency for random unsolicited playlist adds. Hopefully Spotify sees how this is negatively affecting lots of people out of their control and does something about this before peoples accounts get deleted. If I get wrongly deleted I’m not paying 10$ per song to get back on Spotify, that’s ridiculous.

[Renegade226]

Dude that's crazy. We need to make as much noise about this issue as possible. Keep pinging tech support, posting on reddits and other socials about this injustice. Distrokid and Spotify need to show some leadership and get on the same page and start punishing the Fake playlists *NOT* the artists whose songs are being exploited without their consent. Summarily convicting us of "paying for fake streams" is not the answer.

This issue is tarnishing the brand/image of Distrokid and Spotify and needs to get rectified.

[Jeremy55]

I just recently got a strike on my account as well. I'm The most careful person about botted streams. I never have paid for any services, or paid for playlisting or anything, and I have done extensive research into botted traps and scams so I can avoid them. And YET I get a strike on my song that has been out for over a year and hardly gets any streams anymore (roughly 20 streams a day for the last 6 months) and I've had no spikes in listens ever on that song. There's literally nothing I can do to avoid another strike, I've literally never even promoted that song. So what am I supposed to do? Just hope I don't get another strike and if I keep getting them shell out $10 every time? I think I have it hard enough as an independent artist!

[Delfi96]

I'm on strike #2 after removing my songs from any playlists that might have used bots.  Although I am no longer paying for pitching to playlists and the songs were removed, I just got a second strike on 14 songs where Spotify indicated that 97% of them were botted.  Out of the 14 songs, 5 of them are the same song, so I'm pretty confused at this point.  Have you had the same experience and, if so, what can we do about clearing our names?

[HankStreak]

Same here. A song added to playlists without consent, now a strike and I can do nothing about it. I've been streaming my work on Spotify for over 10 years, never paid for promotion and stuck to every rule. Very annoying.

[Camhuzar]

Same thing happened to my account two of my 100+ songs got a strike. So majority of them were not affected but I got added to a botted playlist from the seems of things and I am punished for it. I have always applied to pitch my song on spotify for artists but they never give me the time of day because I am small. Why should us artists be punished, crack down on the playlisters like how is this fair. I feel like aritsts should boycott spotify as they are screwing us smaller independent artists over, but I know for lots of people this platform contains our biggest listening base. Sums up the music industry especially in today's climate. The generic bs artists at the top profit and the small ones who really put their soul into their work never get what they deserve... 

[DanMorrissey]

I also got a strike about a week ago, it was a real bummer. I also got irritated on how Spotify (DK claimed they had nothing to do with this) made us watch some generic video about botted playlists and made us answer this quiz like we’re in the 3rd grade. It felt really condescending and demeaning. They won’t even point out which exact playlists the “botted” streams are coming from. I’ve never paid for a playlist placement in my career. Now I’m scared to get another 2 strikes cause of this bs. I would switch distributors but it sounds very complicated because i have a lot of music out, and some of my older song files were on my old laptop that broke down so it would be hard for me to find those exact files. Distrokid needs to say something because they’ve been really quiet about this…. But if this persists I’m going to have no choice but to switch to another distributor.

[Jackwurdrup]

I did the same thing and then in 2 weeks after switching distributors same thing happened so it’s not the distributors. It’s Spotify 😞 

[Jackwurdrup]

I have over 70k monthly streams and now 12 of my songs got flagged 2 times it’s my second strike and I’m not even buying fake streams or playlist . It sucks now what am I supposed to do? Spotify you guys have to do something about it please help it’s not fair for us independent artists. We don’t have the choice of playlists putting my songs in there. We don’t be paying them. It’s up to them if they like our music or we don’t know what they’re doing but if we had the control to get out of those playlists we could be we can’t. We don’t have a choice at all. Now I have to delete my song and put it back on started from 0 streams and what if someone put my song in another playlists that have bots again? They should be getting punished not us! 

[Renegade226]

Dude that is ridiculous! Spotify should be punishing the fake playlists, *NOT* the artists being exploited by them. Both Spotify and the distribution services (DK, Tunecore, etc) seem to be blaming each other, thereby obfuscating responsibility for these indiscriminate account strikes. 

We need to keep making noise about this injustice. It's tarnishing their ethos for "being about the artists". Keep posting on socials and engaging the support staff about this.

[LexOliver_17]

This is mad the same thing happened to me a few days ago! How on earth can we stop it! We put so much of our money, time, effort and love into our music and then we get struck like this it’s despicable it’s happened to a few of my songs and now I’m panicking as I’ve not bought any streams my songs don’t get loads of streams as it is but i make music for myself and for the few in my life and around the world that enjoy it! Spotify needs to ban these playlists! It’s like an artist trap and we have no power to do anything about it, get it sorted please Spotify we aren’t millionaires we just want to make music and enjoy it! Please please please Spotify give us some solution we don’t want to do anything wrong we just want to make our music and not be penalised when our songs get randomly thrown into these AI playlists!  

[NickolRubolas]

I just got my second strike today. Same thing, this is maddening.