Streaming integrity

Artificial streaming is any attempt to generate plays that do not come from genuine listeners choosing your music. Stores detect it, and the consequences land on you rather than on whoever sold it to you.

Prohibited patterns include

• Buying streams, plays, followers, or saves from any service.
• Bots, scripts, emulators, or automated playback of any kind.
• Click farms and paid listening pools.
• Coordinated looping designed to inflate counts.
• Playlists built to farm plays rather than to be listened to.
• Misleading metadata designed to capture searches for another artist.
• Uploading someone else's recording to collect on it.

What actually happens

This is not a warning letter. In practice:

• Stores remove the fraudulent plays, so you never receive that money.
• Stores can charge back royalties already paid, leaving a negative balance.
• The release is removed, sometimes the whole catalog.
• The artist profile can be penalized in store algorithms long-term.
• The distribution account can be terminated.

The damage usually outlives the release. An artist profile flagged for artificial streaming carries that history into every future release.

"It was a promotion service"

Most services selling "guaranteed streams", "playlist placement for a fee", or "organic growth packages" deliver artificial streams. Being unaware of how a service generated the plays does not protect the account, because the plays are attached to your release regardless.

Before paying anyone to promote your music:

• Ask exactly how listeners will find the release. A real answer names channels and audiences.
• Treat guaranteed stream counts as a definitive red flag. Real promotion cannot guarantee plays.
• Be wary of playlists with high follower counts and no listener engagement.
• Keep records of what you paid for and what was promised.

Safe promotion

Editorial pitching through the store's own artist tools, your own audience, paid advertising that puts a link in front of real people, press, radio, live performance, and Smartlinks that make it easy for a real listener to choose their service.

If you think a release is affected

Stop any promotion you have running, keep the records of what you bought and from whom, and contact support before the reporting period closes. Reporting it yourself is treated very differently from having it found.

For enterprise operators, artificial streaming in your catalog is your responsibility to detect and act on. See Troubleshooting and escalation.