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Given my experience and knowledge of how Spotify deals with much-less nefarious uses of fake streams, I'm very skeptical of these claims. There's a significant

by mjr00 3y ago

Given my experience and knowledge of how Spotify deals with much-less nefarious uses of fake streams, I'm very skeptical of these claims. There's a significant (several month) delay between a Spotify stream and the artist getting a payout. (This is probably shorter if you're Taylor Swift, but the artist profiles involved here aren't.) During this time Spotify will indeed do some checks for stream legitimacy. It's not hard to detect a song from a completely unknown artist somehow getting 1 million streams from southeast Asia. Given that and the overall inefficiency of this scheme, my uneducated guess would be the "anonymous gang member" decided to fuck with the reporter by coming up with an outlandish, yet plausible-at-a-surface-level scheme, similar to Tony Soprano messing with his golfing buddies by telling them fake mob stories.[0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0D3xkOeMdA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0D3xkOeMdA

pjc50 3y ago
See also: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-could-ban-white-noise-podcasts-to-boost-annual-profit-by-up-to-38m-report/ https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-could-ban-whi...
marginalia_nu 3y ago
To be fair, relatively obscure, low budget, and overtly gang-affiliated music is all over Swedish Spotify, it's regularly making the charts. It's a touchy subject as you're very likely to face accusations of racism and discrimination if you question the overnight popularity of this obscure music genre, so I can see why they'd be especially hesitant to look under this particular rock.
lawlessone 3y ago
Considering you can just upload white noise and make money it's not entirely implausible. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-08-17/white-noise-podcasters-are-costing-spotify-38-million-a-year https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-08-17/white-... If the accounts listening to these white noise streams are paying customers it puts Spotify in a bit of bind, because these people are actually paying to listen to white noise. The article also mentions the journalist talked to the police who have kind of confirmed it.
- mjr00 3y ago
  The white noise stuff is entirely different from this... the two problems with the white noise podcasts are 1) it sneaks into the recommendation algorithm. There's legitimate reasons to want to listen to white noise, but the likelihood that someone listening to a podcast wants to next listen to 3 hours of white noise is effectively 0. 2) perception of fairness due to the "artist pool" that Spotify uses. Is it fair that a team of musicians, singers, engineers, etc. gets paid the same for a stream as someone who just uploaded 3 hours of white noise? Debatable. (I'm sure this will start happening with AI/procedurally generated music at some point, too.) The users listening to the white noise are real people who are paying or hearing ads. It's not really relevant to the article at hand. > The article also mentions the journalist talked to the police who have kind of confirmed it. > The Swedish company said it was not aware of any contact made by law enforcement If there's no actual case, it just means someone in law enforcement sent an email. They may have been told the story by the very same "anonymous gang member."
saaaaaam 3y ago
The trick here is that they aren’t just driving fake streams. They are burying the fake streams in amongst legit streams. I’m still a little sceptical of this article’s claims, but there is absolutely a problem with fake streams/stream manipulation.

by mjr00 3y ago

pjc50 3y ago

See also: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-could-ban-white-noise-podcasts-to-boost-annual-profit-by-up-to-38m-report/ https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-could-ban-whi...

marginalia_nu 3y ago

To be fair, relatively obscure, low budget, and overtly gang-affiliated music is all over Swedish Spotify, it's regularly making the charts. It's a touchy subject as you're very likely to face accusations of racism and discrimination if you question the overnight popularity of this obscure music genre, so I can see why they'd be especially hesitant to look under this particular rock.

lawlessone 3y ago

Considering you can just upload white noise and make money it's not entirely implausible. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-08-17/white-noise-podcasters-are-costing-spotify-38-million-a-year https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-08-17/white-... If the accounts listening to these white noise streams are paying customers it puts Spotify in a bit of bind, because these people are actually paying to listen to white noise. The article also mentions the journalist talked to the police who have kind of confirmed it.

mjr00 3y ago
The white noise stuff is entirely different from this... the two problems with the white noise podcasts are 1) it sneaks into the recommendation algorithm. There's legitimate reasons to want to listen to white noise, but the likelihood that someone listening to a podcast wants to next listen to 3 hours of white noise is effectively 0. 2) perception of fairness due to the "artist pool" that Spotify uses. Is it fair that a team of musicians, singers, engineers, etc. gets paid the same for a stream as someone who just uploaded 3 hours of white noise? Debatable. (I'm sure this will start happening with AI/procedurally generated music at some point, too.) The users listening to the white noise are real people who are paying or hearing ads. It's not really relevant to the article at hand. > The article also mentions the journalist talked to the police who have kind of confirmed it. > The Swedish company said it was not aware of any contact made by law enforcement If there's no actual case, it just means someone in law enforcement sent an email. They may have been told the story by the very same "anonymous gang member."

saaaaaam 3y ago

The trick here is that they aren’t just driving fake streams. They are burying the fake streams in amongst legit streams. I’m still a little sceptical of this article’s claims, but there is absolutely a problem with fake streams/stream manipulation.