Spotify for Artists stats looking suspicious... HELP

[NSP-Band]

Okay, so I am going to try my best to outline the situation in the most detail possible (stay with me).  Basically, my band released a single a year ago.  It did well but slowly started fizzling up until almost exactly a year later.  Still getting some plays (like 20 listeners, 25-30 streams a day), not bad for our second song a year after release.  It was sitting around 5K streams from what I remember.

About two weeks ago (March 19th) it had a little jump up! Nothing major, it went from about 20 listeners on March 18th to 120.  I thought okay, must've landed on a playlist or something, I'm sure that was it.  A few days go by, and it falls down to 70 listeners on the 21st, but no playlists showed up.  Then the next day it jumps back up to about 200-250 listeners a day and then starts snowballing, doubling/tripling listeners every 2-3 days (some days fluctuating back down by half, and then back up the next day).  We're sitting at about 1,700 listeners per day, with about 18-1900 streams per day.  

Now... I have scoured the internet and the Spotify for Artists data that they have provided, with little to no explanation as to where the streams are coming from, other than 88% of them being from our profile and catalog.  I thought that was super weird, I was expecting a playlist, or some algorithm movement, discover weekly, etc. but no. 

Seemingly 8000+ streams in the past few weeks from basically entirely our profile and catalog (88%) and "other" (8%), a 49/51 male and female split, and the streams coming from mainly larger cities across the US, as well as the age range is a little higher than we would expect, not that much engagement (saves, playlist adds). 

The weirdest part for me is that after contacting Spotify for Artist's help hotline by email and exchanging multiple emails with seemingly automated responses, I demanded a real person look into it.  They replied with a very short, straight-to-the-point email stating,

"We understand how important this is for you.

We can assure you that the stats you see in Spotify for Artists are accurate.

All the plays made on the release ******* seems legitimate.

If there's anything else that we can help you with, let us know." 

ANY ideas or explanations are welcome, we just want to know whether or not to believe it, or if this appears like bot activity.  I would like to add that we have never contacted, let alone paid anybody to raise our streams or anything sketchy like that.  Simply posted our songs and let them ride.  - NSP

[Kiril · Accepted solution]

Hey @NSP-Band!

We're just the moderators of this Community, so we don't have any insights on your artist stats, but if our Artist team said your stats are accurate, there really shouldn't be any reason to doubt them. We're sure they've verified the data before they got back to you confirming this.

I personally know a couple of friends who often check out Artists from their Spotify profiles, so this doesn't sound odd to me personally. Could be that your music got share somewhere on social media or through other means and people are thus starting to discover your Spotify profile and play music from it.

That being said, we have a couple of friendly Artist competitions here on the Community. Check out our blog post for more info and follow the steps if you'd like to participate. Maybe we can be of some help trying to get your music noticed by some of our Community members 🙂

[NSP-Band]

I really appreciate the response!

I know it’s not totally out of the ordinary for people to listen to bands/artists from their profile and catalog, I do it all the time.  My concern is the fact they’re somehow discovering it from our profile and catalog, and to be clear I’m talking about 18,000+ “people” and counting.  

The other stats also just don’t add up, it all seems really strange. Maybe I’m just super paranoid and should leave it to Spotify to figure out, but with nearly 20,000 “monthly listeners” you’d expect some traffic to our IG, more engagement on Spotify (follows, likes, etc), and the percentages of where the streams are coming from to change over the month (none of which are happening).  I just don’t want our track to be removed, or our chances at actually triggering the algorithm later being totally destroyed (because of the data the bots are supplying being inaccurate/way different from the genuine ones). 

Are there any avenues within the “profile and catalog” or “other” categories for location of streams/listeners that I’m just not thinking of, or that Spotify isn’t telling us? What I mean is: maybe we’re showing up on these listeners Spotify home pages?  One would think that would indicate other algorithmic movement, which isn’t occurring. 

I have officially exhausted all of our resources, and am desperate for answers, as we have an album dropping in a few weeks time.  I just want to see genuine numbers, and know for certain they’re genuine when the album drops. 

[Kiril]

Hey @NSP-Band, there seems to be some confusion as to how you're interpreting your Spotify for Artists data.

The Sources of streams category shows where the playback is being started from. As far as we understand, it doesn't really tell you where your track was discovered on as you state.

So this means that people are discovering your tracks by different means and then moving on to your profile and then streaming those directly from your profile page or discography instead of adding them to their playlists/library and streaming from there. This as mentioned really doesn't sound to be an odd behavior.  By the looks of it, you also aren't featured in any of our algorithmic or editorial playlists. The "Other" category, among others, includes playback from voice controlled speakers and similar, so if someone asks to play your song on a smart speaker via a voice assistant for example.

Where you've actually been discovered on can be seen on your profile page in the, aptly named, "Discovered On" section. You never shared your band's name, so not sure how that looks for you, but best to check what you have listed there for more insights on where your tracks are actually being discovered on VS where they are being played from post discovery.

Hope that clears things up!

[BLU6]

Hey, NSP-Band! I currently have the same thing going on. I had taken a brake from creating music for a few months and my listeners were something like 2-5 a day. I did however keep posting music related content on youtube and instagram. Yesterday I opened up my spotify artists and it had 5 people listening right now. After a few hours it jumped up to 65+ and now, the next day it still jumps around from 40+ to 70+. Exactly the same as yours - almost all of the streams come from my profile and catalog. Have you found the answer to this? Or at least any updates? Please let me know!

[motown_mikey]

Hi there

Are there any updates on the issues mentioned above? My band currently has the same thing going on. We released a one-track-single about one month ago. We now have more than 10'000 listeners, sudden spikes in streams from outside our home town/country (Zurich, Switzerland) over the past four weeks and constantly around 60 - 100 active listeners at any given time of the day. As much as I would like that to be true, it seems very suspicious, e.g. there are no "Listeners also like" artists, the playlist we are supposedly on does not contain our song, we have no increased social media activity etc.

If you could please share any new insights that would be very much appreciated.

[MihailY]

Hey @motown_mikey,

Thanks for reaching out.

As much as we'd like to help you further, this issue would be best handled by our colleagues over at Artist Support. You can reach the team here.

Let us know if there's anything else.

Take care,

[GPremacy]

I had the same type of thing happen just now.  Today, I messaged the Support team, and the basis was that "sometimes the program overcounts but its always correct when they update numbers.... sounds like a bunch of hot air.

[guitarbutler]

I think there's something incredibly fishy going on too everyone... I came across this guy on Tik Tok who was posting all kinds of nonsense about all of his "huge success" in the music business. Then he started showing all of his Spotify analytics and stuff and I had never heard of him before but when he showed the world map of his streams I noticed something that did not make sense at all.... The green color that is supposed to show the areas where you are getting the most of your streams literally covered the entire USA and then only traced a super thin line of green around the outline of the rest of the entire continental globe. Apparently the entire coastal line of the world streams this dudes music, which was the second thing I noticed that was super sussss. It was aweful. Horrible. The worst quality recordings and just not good music. Yet its showing hes getting over 4,000 listeners a day and has a total of a half a million streams over his whole catalogue total. So, yeah something really messed up is going on. 

[djgrumble]

Hi all, so I'm an artist on Spotify and I have a song that has been growing like crazy mainly due to inclusion in Radio playlist. However, over the last couple months, I've seen massive swings in the daily listeners. It may be getting upwards of 20,000 streams on one day, and then dramatically drop to 5000 the next day, then shoot back up again. It seems like it's randomly dropping off and being re-added to Radio as if someone's doing it manually. Has anyone else seen anything like this and how do I prevent the daily listeners from falling off a sudden cliff? Stats for the song are attached ("WuGambinos" by DJ Grumble on Spotify). To a lesser extent I've seen this happen with some of my other tracks too.

[markusbanks]

last night I had 11k 337 streams now I have 9k what's going on ?

[SCI-00364]

dear,

as long as streams are not realtime, which they pretended in the early days to be, it will never be possible to validate their counts and systems. In the long rung, other streaming services will outcompete this, certainly for small and medium income bands. Kind regards, 

[SCI-00364]

keep posting these strange dynamics - comforts a lot other bands & musicians - thanks for keep sharing!

[RiverSongMusic]

Same here. I just released a song and it got 5000 plays in about an hour, then quickly went down to normal, which is about twenty plays or fewer a day. No promotions. It really seems to me Spotify is filtering what we see, like all websites do, and the filter broke. What else could explain it? The real problem is at the end of the day these are the numbers I get paid on, and the numbers appear to be randomly manipulated as Spotify desires with the occasional broken filter when people actually stream my songs. The only other possibility I can think of is also viable (as a broken system issue), which would be if someone else's song, more popular than me, got switched in the system (not the song title but just the stats) and I was being "given" stats that were actually generated by someone else, and then the problem got fixed and I'm just a regular guy again. Really, this issue is critical to Spotify's continued dominance in this market. No-one will be happy when they find out Spotify makes up numbers and that's how you get paid. Count me disappointed and confused. I've been at it with everything I got, going on FIVE months, with as many as 25k monthly listeners, and I have made twelve dollars. What's up Spotify????? Oh, and I'm NOT a robot.

[GirlUndead]

I’ve asked Spotify for help several times. My label is  fraudulently streaming and more. The label CEO reuploaded one of my songs on Spotify and credited another artist as the artist and performer of my song to generate her streams etc. The label refuses to stop this and has also attached me to other artists releases to help them out. The label has refused to fix the metadata on all of my releases and has credited my ex-husband and themselves, My name is not included at all. Yet they easily credited and named the artist they gave my song to, as the artist, performer and even writer.

Another artist has gone from a few thousand streams total to hundreds of thousands in a few days. 
I have contacted artist support many times and receive nonsensical replies that do not even make sense. 
I’ve explained that my label is creating the fraudulent streams and doing other illegal things on Spotify and I am not able to contact my distributor because they refuse to give me the information and it’s not available online. Unless the distributor knows that you are a client they do not reply and I’ve tried!

I’ve contacted Spotify Cares on Twitter/X and wrote them every single thing that was going on with my label and how they were doing everything that Spotify stated is not allowed and is punishable. 
They replied to reach out to my label because they care.!!! I replied it’s my label that I’m trying to report!!!

So what am I supposed to do? 
I have saved screenshots emails etc and this can be proven easily.

For gods sake why won’t anyone at Spotify help me??

[stevepaulsounds]

I actually have the opposite - I've been told by a bunch of friends they've listened to my album and yet it only shows up that 4 listeners have made it to the end :(((((((

I really hope this isn't true :::((((((

[andrewmc147]

I don't actually get what you're complaining about. The algorithm suddenly decided to get you 5000 real streams. Its not like Spotify is hiding your profile from people... all its doing is actually promoting your music. In what reality could you just put your music on some platform and have the algorithm keep it alive? Back in the day you'd have to get a label or sell your cd's on the street or something. The fact that it's so easy to get our music heard these days is taken for granted.

[Jadeyes]

I'm having similar issues for a song I released in August last year, which didn't do very well. Since it's release until April 21, 2024, it had just over 1k streams... from April 22, 2024, until now (May 13), it has grown from 1k streams in total to over 17k. There's been a 40,000% increase since April 22. Similar to everyone else commenting here, I have had no change to any of my social medias.

After looking through my profile, I can see that the song has been added to A LOT of playlists, all of them owned by the user 'Spotify Connect'. There seems to be several of these users with the same name, all with a variety of playlists and a badly edited Spotify logo as their profile pic. This in itself seems suspicious. 

Another thing that concerns me is that I can go on and see how many people are listening live. There's been a few times I have went on and seen it creep quickly from zero to 50 or 60 people listening, then it slowly creeps back down to zero. I can't help but think these listens are bots or programmed AI/automation. 

Then there's the streams/listener data... From April 22 to May 10, I have had 16,496 streams with 310 listeners, meaning on average each listener is listening 53 times. HIGHLY DOUBT IT! This cannot be true organic growth, surely. Someone make it make sense. 

[TonyOakley]

Hey there, just wanted to weigh in. I've been an artist on Spotify for 10 years and I've also developed several apps using Spotify's programming API (which lets you access even deeper song insights). 

The growth you experienced on your new music is not out of the ordinary. My band experienced the same thing when we released our last album. We jumped from 100 monthly listeners to 25,000 in under a month. However, our growth was due to being added to a big user playlist, whereas your growth seems to be coming from outside of Spotify. Like the mods said, if you contacted support and they validated your numbers, you really just have to take their word for it.

If you want to get into the super nitty gritty details you can learn how to use the Spotify API. This will give you more info on each track. You can look at popularity scores for each track, which will clue you in as to which songs are doing best. 

And if Spotify is artificially pumping up your songs for no reason... cool! Use it as leverage to get better opportunities. Lots of booking agents look at your spotify numbers, and if they see stuff like that they may be more likely to book you. Same with other artists - everyone checks your spotify numbers before considering whether they want to work with you. Get it while its hot!

Now, if Spotify is reporting these huge numbers, and your digital distributer (Distrokid, etc) and your PRO (if you have one) are reporting different numbers, then you may have a real problem. It believe it is illegal for Spotify to NOT pay you your royalties. These royalties come in two forms: 1. mechanicals from your digital distributer, and 2. performance royalties from your PRO. If you are a songwriter and you aren't affiliated with a PRO, you are missing out on a lot of money, so go take care of that right away (BMI, ASCAP, etc).

I would check your Distrokid reports (or whoever you go through for digital distribution) and make sure everything adds up. If things don't add up, send Spotify's support team a pdf of your earnings from your distributor and tell them there are discrepancies.

Good luck!

[TonyOakley]

Lots of people on here are wondering why their growth on Spotify is not translating to growth on Instagram. This is normal. People don't usually leave Spotify to check an artist's Instagram, they just stay on Spotify. Your Spotify listeners may also not be "active" listeners - they might just be passively listening to your music in the background. There is no reason to worry if your Spotify listeners aren't also following you on Instagram.