What is Artificial Streaming and How To Avoid It
Hitskope shares monthly artificial streaming (AS) reports from DSPs with clients. These reports include all data needed to monitor AS, take preventive action, and eliminate it. Artificial streams are identified and reported by the DSP. Hitskope communicates what we receive from the DSP.
Causes of Artificial Streams
Streaming services work to ensure streams reflect genuine user listening. That's not always the case. AS can result from:
- Fraudulent behavior—someone trying to inflate stream counts or royalties.
- Using a seemingly legitimate marketing or playlisting service that actually uses unauthorized methods.
- Being placed on a fraudulent playlist without your consent. Fraudsters do this to convince artists they can boost streams.
- "Ricochet" AS—fraudsters play random tracks to appear like normal users. You or your artist are random victims, not instigators.
- Fans trying to increase an artist's popularity or earnings.
Important consequences:
- Cases 1 and 2 result from your artist's actions. Cases 3, 4, and 5 typically happen without their involvement. All are considered AS. The DSP will deduct these streams and not pay royalties.
- Some AS is not your artist's fault. You cannot assert no AS occurred simply because your artist says they didn't run fraudulent campaigns. Your artist may be truthful—and AS still happened.
Consequences of Artificial Streaming
Regardless of cause, the result is the same:
- The DSP withholds royalties for all AS.
- Stream counts do not increment for any AS.
- Tracks are blacklisted from official playlists.
- Your recommendations are damaged—you're associated with unrelated artists on the same AS playlist.
- Tracks and artists may be demoted from recommendation algorithms (shadow banning).
- Misleading data about your actual audience. Hurts credibility in the industry.
- Money wasted that could have gone to legitimate promotion.
- The DSP may take down the release. For Apple, Pandora, and sometimes Spotify, this is permanent.
- Spotify only: For any track Spotify identifies as significantly abused, Spotify charges Hitskope a 10 Euro fee. Hitskope passes this fee to you.
- Hitskope may take down and permanently block any track engaging in AS repeatedly or at high volume.
- Hitskope may withhold royalties for such tracks.
- Hitskope will terminate accounts found repeatedly engaging in AS.
What To Do If You Receive an AS Report
- First, identify all artists with an AS count above 100 per track. Inform them of the consequences and penalties (see above). Tracks with 100 or fewer reported AS are likely victims of causes 3, 4, and 5. Also watch for any release or account with multiple such tracks—this may indicate illegitimate action. Keeping low AS counts across multiple tracks is a known technique fraudsters use to avoid detection while generating significant AS.
- For releases or accounts receiving fewer than 100 AS, you can ignore it—consider it inevitable noise (causes 3, 4, and 5).
- Second, send these artists the four educational links below and tell them:
- If they're using a marketing service guaranteeing streams, it is most likely fraudulent. They should stop the campaign immediately. The longer it runs, the more likely they are to incur fines and ruin their ranking.
- If they're running an ad campaign (Spotify or Facebook ads), they should gather proof (screenshots, links) and send it to you to file an appeal with the DSP.
- (Spotify only) If your artist receives a lot of streams from a suspect playlist, have them report it to Spotify using this form. Such playlists often have:
- Hundreds of tracks of very different genres
- Very few saves
- Some greyed out/unavailable tracks
- Most artists unknown with very few Monthly Listeners
- A creator who has created many other playlists with these characteristics
- Educational links:
- If you suspect your artist or client is a bad actor, take down their entire catalog and terminate their account.
- In cases of significantly high AS, we will notify you and may issue a takedown of the related assets to prevent additional AS. Do not redeliver the releases until you confirm the cause of the AS has been addressed and we confirm you can redeliver.
- Do not ignore AS reports. Continually receiving significant AS can result in Hitskope terminating your entire account.
How To Promote Your Artists While Avoiding AS
Communicate with your clients about this issue. Ask them to avoid any paid or unpaid services that guarantee streams or playlist placements—even if those services claim to be completely legitimate and comply with DSP Terms of Service. Very few services truly employ non-artificial methods of audience development.
While Hitskope cannot attest to the following services' integrity (we have not used them), these are services for which Hitskope has never received complaints, nor heard other distributors complain about. Always do your own research before trusting any service to promote your music (in alphabetical order):