Why Buying Fake Streams is Not Worth the Risk

Streaming services come with many benefits for artists, which is why most dedicated musicians consistently upload their music to Spotify, Apple Music, and other platforms. Their accessibility and popularity make them great marketing tools that can result in new fans, collaborations, press presence, playlist placements, and shows.

As a result, some artists try to cheat by using third-party services to artificially boost and increase their streaming numbers. This violates the community guidelines of streaming platforms and music distributors alike and can lead to dire consequences.

But what exactly happens when you get caught engaging in fraudulent activity? One example is the policies implemented by Spotify “that may include the withholding of royalties, the correction of streaming numbers, and measures to ensure the artist or song’s popularity is accurately reflected in our charts. Spotify reserves the right to remove manipulated content from the platform.”

Let’s look deeper into what can happen to artists who ignore the warnings.

The worst thing that can happen if you decide to buy artificial streams is getting caught and banned from the streaming platforms and distributors you work with. This means that all your songs and their organic statistics will disappear from the platform and other people’s playlists, and you might not be able to release your music under the same name again.

Once your content gets labeled as potentially fraudulent, streaming platforms might withhold your royalties. As a result, all the money you could have received from the time you invested might go to waste. On top of that, by manipulating streaming figures, artists contribute to the overall decline in the value of royalties.

Getting discovered online depends on many different factors, one of them being algorithms that judge how valuable your content is and who might be interested in it. Bots do not reflect authentic engagement which can strongly impact how algorithms perceive the value of your music. As a result, you might not show up in any of the recommendations of your target audiences. Additionally, Spotify can reset your streams, which means that if you get caught, you might have to once again start from scratch.

We’ve previously discussed the importance of maintaining a positive reputation, which requires much time and calculated effort. Buying streams and lying to people about how popular your music is can easily damage the positive image you’ve created. If you become a popular artist, some people will probably argue that you do not deserve your success as it was not generated authentically. For this reason, you should focus on organic growth rather than using third-party services.

Lastly, 3rd party services don’t always offer what they promise, thus scamming people for their money and data. By making use of them, you are not only risking your accounts, organic followers, and royalties. You are also risking losing money you could invest in tangible marketing. And let’s not forget that you can never know what exactly happens to the data that shady businesses ask for. This also applies to fake playlists that fortunately can be detected as such fairly quickly.

Building a career does not happen overnight, and although slow growth can feel like no progress is being made, it ultimately ensures longevity. Buying artificial streams, on the other hand, can damage more than it would help, get you banned, and make you lose money.