Is Buying Plays On Spotify Worth It? The Dangers Of Botted Streams, Fans, and Followers

So much of an artist’s career depends on Spotify numbers. Large amounts of listening to your songs can help you get gigs, let you flex on social media, prove to your parents that this whole “music thing” was worth dropping out of college for, and so much more. With so much riding on the line here, it’s no wonder artists, from up-and-comers to stadium-level acts, will fight tooth and nail to maximize their stream counts. 

There is a wide range of services to help meet this demand, but not all of them are as above board as their Instagram ads might make you believe. There are plenty of legal and beneficial ways to increase your stream counts as an artist, which we will discuss later in this article, but the lowest-hanging fruit of simply buying plays is a market ripe for scams and career-killing mistakes.  

This article will discuss how prevalent this issue is in the music industry, how buying streams negatively affects your career, and better ways to invest that money into your artist project to increase your streams and build a sustainable job. 

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Do Artists Buy Fake Streams? 

The sad reality is that bands and artists constantly buy fake streams, and what’s worst is that it’s not uncommon to see online dialogues discussing the merits of the practice. The most common customers for these sellers of fake streams are up-and-coming musicians who often have very little music industry insight and are looking for a quick burst of social capital for their music and to help ensure that it crests the dreaded “> 1,000” mark. 

There is no foolproof way to tell if an artist or band has bought their streams but there are a few telltale signs that might give away that their plays were purchased and their fanbase is fabricated on Spotify:

• Their Plays Vs. Listener Ratio Makes No Sense: If an artist actively releases music, their streams and listener counts should at least be somewhat of a justifiable ballpark. Ratios as high as 25 streams to 1 listener are well within the realm of credibility. But when you start seeing artists with tens of thousands of plays but only a few hundred plays, that should instantly raise alarm bells as those plays are likely caused by a single bot repeatedly spamming the song to up the play count.
• Their Recommended Artists Make No Sense: Spotify’s music discovery algorithm is great at tracking which artists fans often go to after listening to another artist. It tracks this through music style, genre preference, playlist placements, and other metrics. So when a random bot pumps thousands of plays into a deep house track and instantly into a drill track, the algorithm will go haywire and think the two tracks are similar.
• Their Discovered On Makes No Sense: Often, streams are pumped into a track through shady playlist placements. In the Discovered On section of an artist’s page on Spotify, the playlists are listed in the order in a way that lists the playlists that brought in the most amount of streams for them first. You’ll know if an artist paid to have a bottled playlist dump thousands of streams into their music when a shady and conspicuous playlist is listed as one of the top drivers of plays to their account. 

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Six Ways That Buying Streams Can Kill Your Career

Listen, we understand the allure of paying for streams. Dropping a few dollars – or a few hundred – into a shady site and waking up to instantly seeing five or six-digit streaming numbers on your latest single can be incredibly tempting. But these short-term boons have drastic consequences, and as Spotify constantly pushes to crack down on such services, the stakes have never been higher if you get caught purchasing plays. So let’s dive into five of the most significant ways buying streams can negatively affect your growth and potential for discovery on Spotify. 

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Your Account Could Get Deleted

Spotify’s algorithms constantly search for suspicious activity that might lead them to believe the user is buying fake streams. All of the points mentioned in the section above are obvious red flags to the algorithms, and if they believe you to be buying streams, which goes against their terms of service, you could potentially get your entire account deleted.

All the hard work, money, and time you’ve put towards building up your playlists, stream counts, and more could be gone overnight simply by purchasing streams. It happens far more often than you’d assume

It Can Kill Your Algorithmic Momentum

The most significant metric that Spotify’s algorithm considers when deciding whether to include your music in its AI-generated playlists, editorial playlists, and other opportunities for exposure is the ratio of how many times listeners have saved the song compared to the total listens to the track.

Ronny Ho from Spotify sheds light on this, saying, 

“As editors, we understand that human curation is key for music discovery and ensuring the most delightful listening experiences. As our user base grows, striking a balance between individual tastes and personalized, culturally rich experiences remains a priority.” 

This highlights the importance of genuine engagement metrics like saves over listens in influencing both algorithmic and editorial decisions. If you buy plays, the bots rarely save the song for later use, completely decimating your listening ratios to saves. So, while you might get an initial burst of plays on one song, your potential for future exposure is wholly throttled. Authentic engagement is essential for long-term success on platforms like Spotify.

Discover more about Spotify’s balance between human curation and algorithm-driven playlists in the full interview with Ronny Ho Here. 

It Gives You Terrible Data

One of Spotify’s most powerful features is the amount of data it allows you to access about your fan base. This invaluable data is used to book tours, leverage your fanbase to promoters, use for ad retargeting, and so much more. 

Pumping up your play count with a bunch of bots that are often coming from overseas accounts will pump your metrics filled with false and unreliable data that will ruin any opportunity for you to use that data in effective ways. Even inflating a single track with a few extra thousand plays can be enough to screw data in the wrong direction for years. If you plan on touring or leveraging your Spotify numbers to get gigs, buying plays could ruin any chance of this happening. 

It Makes You Look Suspect

Once you know what the red flags are to watch for on an artist’s account, you cannot unsee them. There have been a couple of times when we’ve been watching a reality TV show, and one of the characters on the show says they want to be a producer, rapper, or musician. So, the next step is to check them out on Spotify, right? Then, when we do, we notice they have hundreds of thousands of streams on their latest single but only a handful of monthly listeners, and they couldn’t look more like a clown. 

This is anecdotal evidence from a writer who watches too many MTV reality shows, but it’s far from the exception that proves the rules. More people are wisening up to those who attempt to hack the system, and they will notice when your numbers don’t reflect reality.

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You’re Stealing For Your Creative Colleagues 

Bot-generated playlists on platforms like Spotify can hurt independent artists who rely on streaming revenue. These playlists are created by automated programs that generate fake accounts and streams to boost certain songs or artists artificially. As a result, each dollar of streaming revenue from these playlists takes away from the revenue that could go to hardworking independent artists. This affects their financial earnings and their exposure to the industry.

Spotify pays out royalties to artists from a pool of funds based on the total number of streams. This means the revenue generated from botted playlists does not reflect genuine user engagement with the music. Moreover, these playlists undermine the authenticity of the music streaming experience. Instead of discovering new and exciting music, users are fed a pre-determined list of tracks that have been artificially promoted. This harms independent artists and the integrity of the music streaming platform itself.

You’re Wasting Your Money 

Botted playlists are a dime a dozen, and they prey on up-and-coming producers and artists who don’t know their way around the industry and are hoping for a couple of quick Ws to add to their streaming numbers. And despite the scale of some of these companies – the largest in the botted playlist game being CRAFT, Playlistbros, cute playlist, and Cammonetwork – they are likely only here to take your money and pump up your plays with fake streams that are NOT going to help your career. 

Better Ways To Pay For Streams 

Invest In PR Placement

PR services are a great way to kill a few birds with one stone, and while not as many people discover new music on blogs as they did in Hypem’s heyday, the value hasn’t completely faded. 

Linking sites and blogs to your Spotify account is great for the algorithm. While Spotify doesn’t prioritize blog coverage over other metrics, having outside sources link back to Spotify and their services through your music is never a bad look. The more listeners blogs and websites send your way, the better for your algorithm and your popularity index on the platform. 

Build A Playlist

Building a playlist from the ground up is no easy task, but it’s never too late to start. Creating and managing your playlist is the best type of real estate independent musicians can have in the modern music industry. Once it’s grown substantially, the benefits of having one multiply exponentially. You can trade playlist placements with other artists and leverage your playlist to get more opportunities for your artistic career. Having one makes you look better in the eyes of Spotify. 

We cannot stress enough the importance of having a playlist, and if you need an excellent place to start, here is a complete deep dive into starting a playlist by one of the biggest and most influential curators in the progressive house scene. 

Use Playlist Placement Services

Sites like Listn.Live and Groover are fantastic ways to get your music in front of playlisters and curators, all of whom have loyal and active users. These are the exact types of plays that will be beneficial to you and your Spotify popularity index. Other sites and services are also available, like Partnered Projects, which puts all the tools in your hands to get the stream counts you want – from distribution to marketing and so much more. 

The real benefits of these playlists are when they start to snowball as smaller playlisters discover your music by combing the larger curators’ lists. There have been many times when a playlist of 10k listeners ends up landing artists an extra six or seven playlist placements. Remember that how many playlists your song is included in plays a massive role in Spotify determining if your music is good enough to be featured in their AI-generated playlists! 

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, buying fake streams is a tempting but dangerous practice that can negatively impact an artist’s career. It can lead to many consequences, such as deleting the artist’s account, killing the artist’s algorithmic momentum, and skewing their data, making them look suspect. The allure of a quick boost in stream counts can cloud an artist’s judgment and lead them to make career-ending mistakes.

However, legal and beneficial ways to increase an artist’s stream count should be explored, such as hiring a playlist curator, creating engaging content, and promoting the music through social media. Investing money in these strategies can help increase stream counts and build a sustainable career in the music industry. Ultimately, the key to success is creating an organic and engaged fanbase, which will help artists achieve long-term success and maximize their career potential.

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