Scamming Spotify

Though one of the largest streaming services in the world, Spotify, has millions of listeners across the globe, the company has come under fire in recent years. Typically speaking, Spotify utilized a money-pool approach to paying artists. Ultimately, artists who generated the most plays would receive the largest payouts from Spotify.

The total proportion was equal to the total percentage of official streams the artist generated. It ultimately added up to Spotify paying artists on their platform around $0.004 per stream - meaning the song played for at least 30 seconds before the listener skipped it. While this may seem fair, it diminished the payouts received by smaller artists, causing individuals to call Spotify out for the way they paid out artists.

Instead, many users and even large record labels have suggested a user-licensed system that provides funds contributed from users who listen to an artist's music directly to that artist. Spotify has fought this, though, and has not made any progress towards considering changing the way they do artist payouts at this time. Unfortunately for Spotify, this resulted in several scam artists thoroughly defeating their system.

Two specific instances of this type of scam have been documented by Spotify, both varying just slightly in their practicalities. One operation cost Spotify approximately $20,000. The other operation, in theory, paid out one Bulgarian individual over $1 million. Each of these operations eventually came to an end after being detected by Spotify. Both, however, used the same tactic to generate income through Spotify's system.

The smaller of the two operations, carried out by indie band named Vulfpeck, was relatively simple. Deciding to use Spotify as a resource to help fund a tour, the band released a silent album called Sleepify. It consisted of multiple, silent tracks, all approximately half a minute in length. The band then took to social media, asking fans to play their silent album on repeat while they slept.

Their plan worked - Vulfpeck was able to generate around $20,000 in royalties from the album itself, which they used to fund a free tour. However, once Spotify realized what the band had done, they requested the band remove the album for violating their terms of service. Ultimately, the band used Spotify's top play payout algorithm to generate an extensive amount of revenue.

The second operation was much different. Spotify tracks playlists that earn the most revenue for the company. A Bulgarian individual created two separate playlists - one called Soulful Music, and another titled Music From The Heart. The playlists each contained approximately 460 tracks, and had approximately 1,200 listeners each month.

However, the tracks on these playlists were, on average, 46 seconds in length. Artists on the list were little-known and had a minimal online presence, making them difficult to track. Yet, somehow, with only over a thousand listeners, both of these playlists were quickly climbing the ranks of Spotify's most successful playlists, paying out royalties to an ISRC code that linked to a Bulgarian operation.

The individual created 1200 premium Spotify accounts, and then used each of these accounts to stream these playlists on loop, causing them to climb the charts relatively rapidly. According to multiple resources, this went on for approximately four months, earning this individual around $1 million in royalty profits.

While Spotify has long fought the change to user-licensed payouts, intelligent scammers across the globe have found ways to use their system to generate profits. It's relatively startling to think how easily these individuals profited from the payout system Spotify currently has in place.