In the digital era of music streaming, getting discovered on platforms like Spotify is crucial for artists seeking to grow their fan base and expand their reach – and we understand how difficult that can be for an indie musician.
Unfortunately, fraudulent practices, specifically botted playlists, are on the rise, hiding behind promises and raving reviews that are fake or paid for.
It’s our job at SubmitHub to safeguard artists from these fake playlists. The following article highlights the risks of fake playlists and dives into some of the steps we take to protect our users.
This year we launched our Playlist Checker which allows you to check the integrity of ANY playlist on Spotify.
We've also been sharing our findings with Spotify to help them stop the problem of fraudulent streaming.
We run a tight ship, and to date I am confident that our playlisters are not the source of Distrokid or Tunecore's recent "takedowns". If you would like me to take a deep dive into any issues you may have, I'm happy to do so. We've got a full-time team and thousands of lines of code in place to make sure that folks stay safe here.
Fake playlists promise to expose artists to “organic listeners”, typically in exchange for a fee. The results are not genuine, however. These fake playlists employ various tactics such as artificially inflating stream numbers and employing bots/computer warehouses to generate plays. More often than not these bot plays come from reputable locations like New York, Los Angeles, London, etc.
Want to know how to tell the difference? Here are some easy ways you can spot a fake playlist:
Two Story Melody & Indie Music Academy made a cool video about spotting fake playlists that we recommend watching:
Engaging with fake playlists can truly hurt you as an artist. It leads to wasted finances but also damages the trust between artists and playlist curators. Just imagine a real curator seeing a list of multiple known, botted playlists in your artist profile – they may just feel discouraged to work with you and afraid of harming their credibility. Moreover, association with disreputable playlists can hinder the chances of getting on editorial playlists in the future, and can ultimately result in your song being removed from Spotify.
At SubmitHub, we have implemented a whole system to identify and protect you from fake playlists. By prioritizing artist safety, transparency, and authenticity, SubmitHub ensures that artists' music submission reaches genuine playlist curators.
We vet and verify all of our curators. SubmitHub meticulously verifies the credentials of playlist curators before granting them access to the platform. The team thoroughly reviews each curator's past activities and monitors their engagement with artists. This process effectively identifies and eliminates the majority of fraudulent individuals seeking to exploit artists (about 80% of curator applications get rejected).
We share our data with you. SubmitHub equips artists with comprehensive analytics and numbers, enabling them to track the performance of their submissions. Transparent insights into playlist placements, play counts, and listener engagement empower you to evaluate the authenticity and effectiveness of the campaigns.
No other playlisting service has as much data as we do, and we use it to keep you safe.
We use code to keep you safe at scale. SubmitHub employs advanced technology and algorithms to detect and deter fraudulent activities. Our platform closely monitors play counts, growth patterns, and user behavior, swiftly identifying any suspicious or irregular activities. We’ve collected more than 20 million data points around our playlists to date. This proactive approach ensures the integrity of the submission process, protecting artists from potential scams related to fake playlists.
SubmitHub's commitment to artist safety and rigorous curator validation process offers several advantages to your exposure:
The exposure is genuine. SubmitHub connects artists with authentic playlist curators who genuinely appreciate their music. This ensures that your work is placed in front of listeners who are more likely to engage with their music, fostering organic growth and creating meaningful connections – ultimately leading to teaching the Spotify algorithm the right place for your music.
Your decision-making is data-driven. SubmitHub's analytical tools enable artists to make data-driven decisions regarding their promotional strategies. By providing more information than any other platform out there, we allow them to assess the effectiveness of specific playlists, identify trends in listener engagement, and fine-tune their marketing approach accordingly.
Pickiness: Being thorough with our curators also makes it harder for songs to get accepted and shared. Our playlisters are real people who have their own tastes and ideas about curation, and their decisions are ultimately made on subjective opinion.
Working with what we’ve got: We’d like to believe that Spotify has enough internal data to be able to tell us whether a playlist is genuine or not, but, unfortunately, this isn’t the case. So, we’ve built our own internal tools using data from Spotify’s public API, as well as information provided to us directly by artists who’ve been shared in our playlists. We trust our information to be 99.99% true, but without Spotify’s final word, there’s always that 0.01% chance of not catching someone. And so…
We’d rather be safe than sorry: We can't ever be 100% certain a playlist is fake, and occasionally we make the wrong decision. Weird growth patterns and odd playlisting behaviors are red flags for us, and we want to keep our users safe. We’d rather reject an application from a curator who seems suspicious than put your artist profile at risk.
As the music industry continues to evolve, the need for secure platforms that protect artists from fake playlists becomes increasingly vital. SubmitHub’s goal is to protect artists, safeguarding their interests and shielding them from the perils of fraudulent playlist practices. By prioritizing transparency, providing robust feedback mechanisms, and implementing anti-fraud measures, SubmitHub empowers artists to navigate the music landscape with confidence, facilitating genuine connections between musicians and playlist curators