Welcome to a very common scam, Spotify Playlists. You can read about the fake Distribution Deals and useless Industry List in our previous articles. Today though… We’re coming for all you Facebook scammers promising artists thousands of plays for as little as $20 for up to $300. We’ll explain to you exactly how these plays are accumulated. How these fake promoters seem to have many happy customers. How come no one is leaving bad reviews. And most importantly, how to spot a scam playlist. Good luck and we hope you won’t find yourself in the following paragraphs.
1. How is the scam run?
Someone will likely post a Facebook group post where they say something along the lines: “New music needed for Spotify playlist with over one million followers! Drop links!” And without even thinking about it, in the artists go… 100 links, 200 links, sometimes even up to 1000 links in less than 24 hours. All artists dying for extra exposure. Then in comes a person, with no credentials and very few personal posts where you can see who they are and where they live, and they drop their email saying: “Nice music! Please send your song for consideration to X e-mail” And those who are unseasoned… Take the time to comply with the request. Then comes the catch! The person emails you back saying you need to pay to be featured on their playlist. When we inquired artists, the lowest price we heard was $20 and the highest… you ready??? $4000. Oh yes, they do packages depending on how much money you seem to have.
So you pay hoping that now you will finally have tens of thousands of streams! In a couple of days, you start getting screenshots, or better yet, you see with your own eyes your numbers going up. This is working!!! Right??? Well… NO.
2. How can you tell the streams are fake?
1. You get no new saves or fans.
2. Your Spotify insights show you your streams coming from super shady places. 3rd world countries or economically poor states from America where it is cheap to create and maintain fake IPs.
4. Or you get A LOT of new listeners and no streams.
5. Only one song of yours is getting a lot of attention while the others are not moving even by a play. Real people, mathematically, at least one out of 111 will take an interest in more of your music. And if they’re legit streams, your songs will be recommended to those listeners on their homepage so all of your songs will start improving their streams IF it’s the real deal.
6. You get tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands even, of streams and yet… No new Facebook Likes, no new IG followers, no new website hits. Just no ripple effect anywhere. That’s because the streams are fake. If you were to truly get that many plays, you would see at least a couple hundred new fans everywhere on your social AND very likely someone will reach out to you with a request for a blog feature or interview. Music blogs always want to catch the next booming star and they keep track of legit stream increases. Trust us, you will know how it actually feels when you hit 100k Streams for real.
7. Biggest red flag: they actually tell you how many streams you’ll get. Real playlists DON’T KNOW how people will react to a song thus real curators make NO GUARANTEES.
3. How do they get such big numbers?
With plenty of cheap VPNs, a lot of tabs opened simultaneously and left on Mute in the background. It is one thing to listen to one artist on repeat as a fan. And it is entirely another to have multiple Spotify accounts playing specific songs for specific amounts of time.
4. How come they have so many happy customers online?
Because they’re all happy to see more streams than they’ve ever had without actually checking the validity of the streams. Funny thing too, many of these artists have incredibly poorly produced music. Because of their subpar quality, real curators don’t even take them into consideration, while the Facebook scammer tells them EXACTLY what they want to hear. In few words: ignorance is bliss. But also because… read 5!
5. How come no one says anything bad about them?
Oh but they do! When the very few artists who actually care to realistically improve their career and not just get numbers, they get blocked by the scammer. No second questions or follow up conversations are tolerated by these scammers. Their income is based off quantity. And they get pissed off if you have too many questions. Sometimes even deflecting your worries back on you and hitting you where you’re the weakest: your music. They might even say stuff like: “we did our job but people don’t like your music enough to f*ck with it.” They will most definitely block you though.
If you’re wondering why no one sues them is because they usually get paid small amounts from A TON of artists. After we spoke to an entertainment lawyer recently, he revealed: “I charge $500 an hour for my services. To go after an online Spotify scammer that charged my client $300 is mathematically futile.” As for the scammers who charge in the thousands… The artists paying them are 99% desperate and pay them the last money they had. So no money left over to sue them.
Now you know. If you made it this far, please like and give a listen to our legit B.R.E. Spotify playlist with artists we personally know and wrote about on this very website:
Blue Rhymez Entertainment 