Artificial streaming, also known as streaming fraud or "botting," is when an artist uses artificial means to increase their stream counts, or their music is involved in such practice.

If the majority of the streams on your release are found to be artificial, your music will likely be removed from streaming services, and royalties that were earned from the artificial streams will not be paid. You may also receive a warning from DistroKid and/or your DistroKid account will be closed.

This is serious business and bears repeating:

• DO NOT PAY FOR ANY SERVICE THAT OFFERS MORE STREAMS
• DO NOT PAY FOR ANY SERVICE THAT OFFERS MORE FOLLOWERS
• DO NOT PAY FOR ANY SERVICE THAT OFFERS PLAYLIST PLACEMENT

Paying for More Streams

It's not always obvious that services you're signing up for to help you grow as an artist are fraudulent, such as through "promo" companies who claim that they're creating ads. These promo companies are almost always a scam.

Sometimes, streaming fraud stems not from an artist being malicious, but from purchasing a shady marketing campaign. If you're planning on running promotional campaigns for your music, please do your research and only work with reputable companies. There are many so-called "promotional" or "marketing" companies that appear legit, but actually use bots and other shady methods to artificially increase streams. This almost always ends badly for the artists involved with these companies.

Playlists With Artificial Streaming (Botted/Fake Playlists)

It is also very important to be mindful of the playlists your music is added to, even if you did not pay for placement on these playlists. Unfortunately, there are playlist owners who grow their playlist through streaming fraud – these are commonly known as "botted playlists" or "fake playlists."

If your music is placed on one of these playlists, it can lead to artificial streams and may result in the removal of your release. If you think your music has been "botted" due to being on one of these playlists, you should check the playlist itself and report it to Spotify if it seems suspicious to you.

We have provided steps to check the playlists you have been added to in our FAQ article here.

Here is a tool for checking if a playlist you're in is botted: https://www.artist.tools/bot-checker

If you would like to report a suspicious playlist to Spotify, please visit https://artists.spotify.com/c/playlist-reporter.

How Platforms Are Tackling Artificial Streams

Our streaming partners are constantly working to identify and prevent streaming fraud on their platforms. Note that streaming services reserve the right to remove manipulated content from their platforms. Check out this statement directly from Spotify: 

An artificial stream is a stream that doesn't reflect genuine user listening intent, including any instance of attempting to manipulate Spotify by using automated processes (bots or scripts).

We put significant engineering resources and research into detecting, mitigating, and removing artificial streaming activity on Spotify so that nothing stands in the way of our mission of giving artists the opportunity to live off their art, and so that rights holders are paid as fairly as possible for their work. The integrity of this is incredibly important to us because an illegitimate stream means there are honest, hard-working artists on the other side that are impacted.

More info from Spotify here:
How does Spotify protect against artificial streaming?