You hire somebody to promote your song.

A week later your streams explode.

Fantastic.

Or is it?

Artificial streaming can threaten royalties, releases and even your wider catalogue.

The difficult part is that artists sometimes buy apparently legitimate “promotion” without realising that the provider is using bots or manipulated listening.

Guaranteed streams are a warning sign

Nobody can legitimately guarantee that real people will listen to your track 100,000 times.

A service can guarantee:

  • Advertising impressions
  • Promotional work
  • Influencer outreach
  • Campaign spend

It cannot honestly guarantee listener behaviour.

Be suspicious of phrases such as:

“100% organic 50,000 streams guaranteed.”

Look for strange geography

Suppose your audience has always been:

UK
US
Australia
Germany

Then overnight almost every stream comes from one unexpected city.

That does not prove fraud.

But investigate it.

Compare listeners with engagement

Artificial activity may produce streams without normal fan behaviour.

Look for:

  • Large streams
  • Very few saves
  • No follower growth
  • No catalogue listening
  • No social engagement
  • Strange repeat patterns

Again, none of these alone proves fraud.

You’re looking for combinations of unusual signals.

Check the playlist

Ask:

  • Does it have a clear curator?
  • Does its audience look plausible?
  • Are artists relevant to the genre?
  • Does the curator sell guaranteed plays?
  • Is the playlist changing constantly?
  • Do other artists report problems?

Avoid paying directly for guaranteed playlist streams.

Be careful with “promotion agencies”

A professional marketer should be able to explain what they actually do.

For example:

“We’ll run £500 of Meta advertising targeting electronic music listeners in Germany.”

That’s understandable.

“We use proprietary organic methods to guarantee 200k Spotify plays.”

That’s considerably less convincing.

What can happen if streams are fraudulent?

Platforms may:

  • Remove invalid streams
  • Withhold associated royalties
  • Remove tracks
  • Remove playlists
  • Flag accounts
  • Take further action

RouteNote advises artists not to use services promising guaranteed or supposedly “genuine” paid streams because they are frequently artificial.

What should you do if something looks wrong?

Stop the campaign.

Save:

  • Provider details
  • Receipts
  • Messages
  • Dates
  • Playlist links

Contact your distributor where appropriate.

Do not keep paying because the numbers look good.

Real marketing aims to create listeners.

Fake promotion aims to create numbers.

There’s a very big difference.