Bought streams can cost you real money: Spotify's artificial-streaming fee explained

Most artists think the worst that can happen with a dodgy promotion campaign is that the money is wasted. On Spotify it can be worse than that. Since 1 April 2024 Spotify has charged labels and distributors per track when it detects "flagrant artificial streaming" on their content, and the distributors most independents use pass that charge straight on. So a campaign that bought you fake plays can end with a bill.

What Spotify actually does

Spotify defines an artificial stream as one that doesn't reflect genuine listening intent, including plays generated by bots or scripts. When it confirms them, its artist guidance lists what happens:

• those streams earn no royalties;
• they are taken out of public stream counts and charts, and don't feed the recommendation algorithms;
• depending on how bad it is, the song can be pulled from Spotify playlists;
• distributors may warn you, charge a penalty fee, suspend your account or take the music down;
• Spotify can remove a track entirely if it looks like it exists mainly to collect artificial streams.

The per-track fee was announced in Spotify's November 2023 royalty changes, alongside the 1,000-streams-a-year minimum for a track to earn recorded royalties. Spotify's help page says the charge applies only to "very high rates of artificial streaming per track" and calls it a deterrent. It doesn't publish the amount.

How much it costs, and who pays

The distributors do publish it. TuneCore, FUGA and UnitedMasters all give €10 per flagged track, and CD Baby puts it at roughly $10 to $11. It isn't one-off. TuneCore, FUGA and CD Baby describe it as per track, per month: TuneCore says a track that shows up in Spotify's fraud report in three different months is charged three times.

All four say the fee is passed on to you. TuneCore charges your balance or card on file and emails you which tracks were hit. UnitedMasters takes it from your Wallet, as a line called "Spotify Artificial Streaming Penalty Fee". FUGA deducts it from the next royalty payment, and notes that it shows as an adjustment on the invoice, not as a line in the raw royalty report. CD Baby shows it as a negative transaction and says it cannot reverse Spotify's decision. CD Baby also notes that Apple applies its own percentage-based cut to earnings tied to flagged streams.

A worked example

Say a promoter you hired runs bots on five tracks of an EP, and Spotify flags all five in two consecutive monthly reports. At €10 per track per month that is 5 × 2 × €10 = €100 in fees. Add the royalties you lose on the fake plays and the promoter's own fee. If your distributor then takes the tracks down, you also lose whatever genuine listening they had built up. TuneCore, for example, says tracks with high shares of fraudulent streams are removed from every platform and can't be re-uploaded. For a small release, the fee alone can be more than the tracks earn from real listeners.

How artists who never bought a bot get caught

The fee follows the track, not the person who paid for the bots. DistroKid tells artists who get a notice that it is "likely" they or someone they work with used a marketing service or ended up on a bad playlist, and "also likely" they didn't know it was fake. TuneCore says it is typically the result of hiring a promotion or playlisting company that guarantees streams or placement. Spotify's own line is blunt: services that promise streams, followers or placements for money are "scams", and even services that charge just to have your track "considered" for playlists break its terms.

You may also never have paid anyone. A collaborator, a manager or an overenthusiastic fan can trigger it. UnitedMasters asks artists not to loop their own music for long stretches and to discourage fans from doing so.

How to vet a promoter, and what to do if you're flagged

Before you pay:

1. Walk away from anything guaranteed. Promised streams, followers or placements break Spotify's rules (Spotify).
2. Ask how they promote. Spotify tells artists to ask a PR or marketing firm about its methods and read reviews from artists who used it.
3. Check the playlists. FUGA's checklist flags low-engagement playlists, oddly flat daily stream counts, and plays that all come from one country, device or source.
4. Watch your data after launch. Spotify lists sudden spikes from new locations, or a spike followed by an immediate drop, as warning signs.

If it happens anyway:

• tell your distributor straight away, and name the service you hired (Spotify);
• report suspicious playlists your track landed on through Spotify's playlist reporter;
• share details of how you promoted the music, so your distributor can take it up with Spotify;
• if your music was taken down and you didn't use promo services, DistroKid says you can re-upload it with the same ISRC to get a fresh Spotify page. Other distributors, TuneCore among them, don't allow this.

What we think

The policy aims at a real problem. Every fake play takes money from the shared royalty pool, so everyone else gets less, a point Spotify and TuneCore both make. A cost per flagged track also hits the bulk uploaders who run hundreds of tracks through bot farms, where taking away royalties alone wouldn't stop them.

But the system sends the bill to the weakest party. Spotify charges the distributor, the distributor passes it to the artist, and the promotion company that actually ran the bots pays nothing. The artist gets a fee with no published threshold, no evidence shown, and no formal appeal described on any of the distributor pages we read. CD Baby says it can't reverse the decision. DistroKid says Spotify gave it no information beyond the notice. Spotify's help page says a distributor can work with Spotify to review a case once the artist explains how the music was promoted, but none of the five distributor pages we read explains how to start that review.

So the winners are the platforms, whose pool gets cleaner at no cost to them, and the large labels, who have relationships with Spotify and staff to fight a flag. The losers are first-time independent artists who paid a slick playlist service. Two cheap fixes would help: Spotify could publish the threshold and the evidence behind each flag, and distributors could name, and refuse to work with, the promoters that keep showing up in the reports. Until then, the only defence that works is not paying for placement at all.