Why Buying Fake Streams to Boost Your Music is Not Worth the Risk

Streaming services offer numerous benefits for artists, compelling dedicated musicians to upload their music to platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and others. Their accessibility and popularity help artists attract new fans, secure collaborations, gain press coverage, land playlist placements, and book shows.

However, some artists resort to cheating to exploit the benefits of streaming platforms at the expense of other musicians. They do so by using third-party services to artificially boost their streaming numbers or getting their songs on shady playlists. This practice violates the community guidelines of streaming platforms and music distributors and can lead to severe consequences.

Let’s take a closer look at what can happen to artists who ignore these warnings.

If you are caught artificially boosting your release, streaming platforms may decide to withhold your royalties. As a result, all the money you could have earned from your invested time could be lost in an instant. Engaging in fraudulent practices doesn’t just affect you—it impacts the artist community as a whole, as manipulating streaming figures can contribute to an overall decline in the value of royalties.

In addition to losing your royalties, streaming platforms and distributors might decide to completely remove your release from their servers. For instance, Spotify states that it "reserves the right to remove manipulated content from the platform," which means all the money you invested in getting your track on the platform could go to waste, along with the organic streams you gathered.

Getting discovered online depends on many factors, one of which is algorithms that determine whether your content is viewed as valuable and who may resonate with it. Bots do not reflect authentic engagement, which can, in turn, impact how algorithms perceive the value of your music. As a result, your tracks might not appear in any recommendations for your target audience. Additionally, Spotify may reset your streams, meaning that if you're caught scamming, you'll have to start colleting your streaming numbers from scratch.

The worst outcome of purchasing fake streams is getting banned from the streaming platforms and distributors you work with. This means all your songs and their organic statistics will be removed from the platform and other people’s playlists, and you may no longer be able to release music under the same name.

We’ve previously discussed the importance of maintaining a positive reputation, which requires time and calculated effort. Buying streams and falsely claiming how popular your music is can easily damage the positive image you've built. If you become a popular artist and get exposed for manipulating streams, some people may argue that you don’t deserve your success, as it wasn't generated authentically. For this reason, you should focus on organic growth rather than relying on third-party services.

Finally, third-party services don’t always deliver on their promises. Instead, they are often designed to scam people for their money and data. By using such services, you’re not only risking your accounts, organic followers, and royalties, but also losing money that could be invested in tangible marketing. And let’s not forget that you can never know exactly what happens to the data you provide to shady businesses of this kind. This also applies to fake playlists, which, too, can be detected fairly quickly.

Due to its popularity and widespread use by music enthusiasts and artists alike, Spotify has adopted a 'tough on fraud' stance, viewing paid third-party services that guarantee streams as illegitimate. In an article dedicated to addressing the consequences of artificial streaming, it explains: "Any service that claims to offer guaranteed placement on playlists on Spotify in exchange for money are in violation of our terms & conditions."

Songs that are detected as artificially boosted can either be demonetized, have their streaming numbers adjusted, or be removed from the platform. In the most severe cases, Spotify can remove the entire artist profile from its services. Finally, since April 2024, Spotify reserves the right to charge labels and distributors per track if it detects and confirms fraudulent activity. Thus, if you want to get music on Spotify, make sure you comply with its policies.

But how does Spotify know that a song was boosted with a third-party service? On its website page on artificial streaming, it explains that it has invested "significant engineering resources and research into detecting, mitigating, and removing artificial streaming activity." Its capabilities include algorithms, machine learning, and AI to help detect fraud.

For instance, one approach is detecting anomalies in streams, such as arbitrary spikes preceded and followed by consistent numbers, or checking which playlists such streams come from, as they may be associated with manipulation. Another approach involves scrutinizing user data for repeated listens, skips, and other inconsistencies.

iMusician and other distributors are obliged to respond to fraudulent activity in line with the terms & conditions of the streaming platforms included in their catalogue. This means that if distributors like us notice patterns hinting at fraud, your tracks will be deleted, and you might possibly have your account suspended. Additionally, if Spotify detects that one or more of your tracks have been artificially boosted, they will apply a penalty. These penalties are reflected as deductions in your sales report, labeled “Spotify (fraud fee)." Since penalties are applied retroactively, deductions will cover streams from past months. Moving forward, any detected activity will appear in your reports with a three-month delay.

Read more about how we handle cases of Spotify fraud fees in our FAQ's.