Artificial Streaming Explained: Why Spotify Removes Streams

On 6 October 2026, a federal judge in Manhattan sentenced Michael Smith, a 54-year-old musician from Cornelius, North Carolina, to 18 months in prison. Smith had pleaded guilty earlier in the year to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Between 2017 and 2024 he uploaded hundreds of thousands of mostly AI-generated songs, streamed them billions of times through thousands of bot accounts on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube Music, and collected the royalties. He also has to forfeit just over $8 million. Reports describe it as the first federal prison sentence in the US for music streaming fraud.

The headline is about one fraudster. The questions working artists actually type into Google are different: how does Spotify spot fake streams? Why did my streams disappear overnight? Can someone bot my track and get it taken down? Is that promo service I paid safe? This guide answers those questions.

What counts as artificial streaming?

Spotify defines an artificial stream as one that "doesn't reflect genuine user listening intent". That covers bots, scripts and click farms, but it is wider than outright fraud. The definition is about behaviour, not about who is behind it. A paid "playlist campaign" that pushes your track to a list fed by fake accounts produces artificial streams. So does a fan group that loops a song on muted phones overnight to hit a milestone, and so does a bot farm you have never heard of.

Spotify's artist guidance is blunt about the business around it. It says it prohibits any third-party service that promises streams or playlist placement in exchange for money, and calls such offers scams. It also tells artists to be highly sceptical of services that charge just to have a track "considered" for playlists.

Why streaming fraud costs every artist money

This is the part most coverage skips. Spotify, like most major services, pays royalties from a shared pool: subscription and ad revenue goes into it, and each rights holder gets a share based on its slice of all streams in that market. A fake stream does not create new money. It takes a slice of the existing pool away from everyone else.

That is why the Smith case mattered beyond one courtroom. The streams were spread thin across an enormous catalogue so that no single track looked suspicious, and the royalties came out of the same pot that pays a techno producer with 20,000 real monthly listeners. AI tools made the fraud scale: generating a catalogue of hundreds of thousands of tracks used to be impossible for one person and is now cheap. If you want the wider picture of where AI music stands on the platforms, our guide to uploading AI-generated music to Spotify covers the rules for legitimate use.

How does Spotify detect fake streams?

Spotify does not publish its detection methods, and for obvious reasons it never will. What it does publish is the list of warning signs it tells artists to watch for in Spotify for Artists:

• A sudden spike in streams for no apparent reason, followed by a drop-off. Real growth tends to build and decay; bought plays switch on and off.
• Most streams coming from unexplained or surprising sources. A playlist you have never heard of suddenly delivering most of your plays is the classic pattern.
• A short-lived jump in followers that does not translate into saves, repeat listens or real audience growth.

The underlying logic is easy to see. Bot accounts behave differently from people: they listen in long, uniform sessions, play the same short list of tracks, rarely save or share, and cluster around particular playlists. One detail matters for artists in particular: the systems judge patterns, not motives. A label-facing support page from the distributor The Source puts it plainly: detection does not distinguish intent, only behaviour.

What happens when your streams are flagged?

According to Spotify, streams it identifies as artificial do not earn royalties, do not count towards public play counts or charts, and do not help your track in recommendation algorithms. Depending on how severe the case is, a track can be pulled from playlists or removed from Spotify altogether.

There is also a money penalty further up the chain. Spotify charges labels and distributors a per-track fee when it detects flagrant artificial streaming on their content, and distributors typically pass that fee on to the rights holder under their distribution agreement. In practice the distributor is often the one who acts first: many artists learn about a problem from an email saying their release is being taken down, not from Spotify. We cover how that looks from the distributor's side in why distributors reject releases, including why a fraud-related takedown weighs heavier on your account than a rejected cover image.

Can someone bot your track to get it removed?

Yes, in effect, and it happens more often than people think. The usual route is not a rival with a grudge. It is a playlist run by a promo operation that pads its numbers with bots, or a "free placement" that drops your track into a list fed by fake accounts so the list looks more varied. Spotify's community forums are full of artists describing the same sequence: an unknown playlist, a spike of a few thousand plays over a few days, then a takedown notice.

Because penalties follow behaviour rather than intent, an innocent artist can still lose the streams and, in bad cases, the release. Distributors generally say they cannot overturn a removal once Spotify has made the call, and an appeal goes to Spotify directly with no guaranteed outcome. That is unfair, but knowing it changes how you act. Speed and documentation are what help.

How to protect your releases

None of this requires paranoia, just a few habits:

• Check Spotify for Artists weekly in the weeks after a release. Look at the source breakdown, not only the total. If one playlist is suddenly responsible for most of your plays, open it and look at its follower count, its other tracks and how often it changes.
• Report suspicious playlists early through Spotify's playlist reporting route, and tell your distributor in writing at the same time. Spotify itself asks artists to inform their label or distributor and share details of any services they have hired. A paper trail showing you raised the alarm yourself is your best argument later.
• Vet every promo service. Anything priced per stream, per follower or per guaranteed placement is a red flag. Legitimate pitching gets your music heard by curators; it never promises a number. Our guide to how Spotify playlists work for artists explains which routes are genuine.
• Tell your fans not to loop. Spotify explicitly asks artists to discourage fans from looping tracks or using automated tools. A well-meant "stream party" on muted devices can look exactly like a bot farm.
• Keep records of invoices, campaign briefs and screenshots of your stats. If a takedown comes, you need to show what you did and did not pay for.

What the Smith sentence changes

Platforms have filtered fake streams for years. What is new is that streaming fraud now carries prison time in the US, not just withheld royalties. Prosecutors had asked for at least 46 months and the defence for probation; the 18 months the court settled on still sends a signal to the operators who sell fake plays in bulk.

For artists who have never bought a stream, the takeaway is less dramatic but more useful. Detection will keep getting stricter as AI makes fake catalogues cheaper, and stricter filters catch more innocent bystanders. The artists who come through that unharmed are the ones who read their own data, ask hard questions about every promo offer, and raise the flag before the distributor does.