Artificial Streaming

Some music services send us reports of tracks that appear to have attracted artificial plays. Often the activity is caused by paid promotional activity, although there are many reasons why streams might appear to services as artificial.

Artificial activity distorts streaming revenue. Music services take this very seriously. We appreciate your help doing everything possible to make sure your music is not subject to artificial streaming activity.

What is artificial streaming?

Many music services differentiate between plays that are the result of user intent, plays that are the result of platform features such as radio or automated and personalised playlists, and plays that are generated by software that emulates user activity.

Some music services have started charging artists and labels for greater exposure on radio and autoplay features. This is what Spotify’s ‘Discovery Mode’ is, and how Marquee and their other advertising formats work.

Music services are now starting to penalise music providers by charging fees where they detect plays that are not the result of paying the music service for advertising or additional exposure. These include plays generated by paying people to listen to tracks, often through paid placements on promotional playlists, as well as plays generated by using software automation.

It is also possible that leaving a track, an album, or a playlist looping for a long time might be counted as artificial streaming.

As your label or distributor, Fresible Music has no advance notice that a music service considers some of the plays your music generates to be artificial. Nor are we told how any music service decides what is artificial and what is a result of user intent. We will assume however that where you or we have paid the music service for advertising or inclusion in a programme such as Discovery Mode, the plays generated will not be considered artificial. But where you have paid a 3rd party to generate plays there is a very high risk that the plays will be considered artificial, and we will be required to pay penalty fees, or be subject to other sanctions.