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How many times is an artist allowed to play their own song before it's considered fraud though?

by uremog 11y ago

6stringmerc 11y ago
As many times as they actually sit there and listen to it. Playing it on mute? Fraudulent click. Personally I try to keep from listening to my own products via distribution channels because it dilutes the actual data set I get to use and review.
pc86 11y ago
45,000 plays in a 30-day month is 1,500 times per day, or 62.5 times an hour. Which makes sense as they say it's a 0m 45s long track. I don't think this is necessarily an area where you want Spotify to say "as long as you don't play it x+1 times you're fine" because then a lot of people will just play it x times a day every day. Playing a track 62 times an hour for a month is clearly fraud.
- uremog 11y ago
  I get that it's fraud. People who want to be fraudulent will be testing this though. What if it were a less clear number - 20,000 times? 5,000 times? All it takes is one musician with a friend who has even limited coding experience to make it reasonably sophisticated.
  - 6stringmerc 11y ago
    Not trying to be dismissive or assume too much, but I genuinely think that Spotify probably runs some analytics to have a general understanding of what low, medium, and high human usage profiles look like. I mean, it just seems logical to me. Most of these cases seem so extreme that even cursory review would indicate suspicious activity.
  - iambateman 11y ago
    Fraud is always combatted by making it cost-prohibitive, not impossible. You could write a botnet that plays a random song via 1,000 user accounts 24/7 that looks imperceptible. It's the same issue Google had with black hat search results. They try to make life hard for people who break the rules and generally don't affect people who follow the rules. And as long as there's a reasonable alternative, they have a financial incentive to keep the service from onerous restrictions.

How many times is an artist allowed to play their own song before it's considered fraud though?

by uremog 11y ago

How many times is an artist allowed to play their own song before it's considered fraud though?

As many times as they actually sit there and listen to it. Playing it on mute? Fraudulent click. Personally I try to keep from listening to my own products via distribution channels because it dilutes the actual data set I get to use and review.

pc86 11y ago

45,000 plays in a 30-day month is 1,500 times per day, or 62.5 times an hour. Which makes sense as they say it's a 0m 45s long track. I don't think this is necessarily an area where you want Spotify to say "as long as you don't play it x+1 times you're fine" because then a lot of people will just play it x times a day every day. Playing a track 62 times an hour for a month is clearly fraud.

uremog 11y ago
I get that it's fraud. People who want to be fraudulent will be testing this though. What if it were a less clear number - 20,000 times? 5,000 times? All it takes is one musician with a friend who has even limited coding experience to make it reasonably sophisticated.
- 6stringmerc 11y ago
  Not trying to be dismissive or assume too much, but I genuinely think that Spotify probably runs some analytics to have a general understanding of what low, medium, and high human usage profiles look like. I mean, it just seems logical to me. Most of these cases seem so extreme that even cursory review would indicate suspicious activity.
- iambateman 11y ago
  Fraud is always combatted by making it cost-prohibitive, not impossible. You could write a botnet that plays a random song via 1,000 user accounts 24/7 that looks imperceptible. It's the same issue Google had with black hat search results. They try to make life hard for people who break the rules and generally don't affect people who follow the rules. And as long as there's a reasonable alternative, they have a financial incentive to keep the service from onerous restrictions.