If you are Interested in getting your song on playlists, before you do anything, you should know how to identify fake Spotify playlists.
Content:
A little bit about Spotify
Beware of the Scammers
Why you Shouldn't buy playlist placements
Just DON'T!!
So how do you Identify a fake playlist?
Buying Streams
So how can you promote your music on real Spotify playlists?
If you're an artist starting your music career and aiming to get your music heard, you've probably learned by now that the best way to increase your number of streams is by getting your song playlist placements. This will hopefully increase your number of monthly listeners, real fans, likes and followers.
In this industry, where music artists are looking to invest in getting their songs on playlists, there will always be people waiting to make a quick buck out of it, without giving anything of value to artists in return.
Many fake curators are only interested in taking artist's money, and not with the aim of helping them.
If you are an artist looking to promote your music and you wonder how to spot a fake Spotify playlist, you've come to the right place.
A Little Bit About Spotify
Spotify is the biggest online platform for streaming and promoting music in 2022. Spotify currently has a staggering 382 million active users, There's 210 million free users and 172 million paying subscription users. Currently there is no other music streaming platform that is close to the size of Spotify. Spotify has created an amazing platform for artists to promote their music, however, when there is a large amount of users, it's most likely you will find scam artists and fraudulent activity occurring within the platform.
Beware Of The Scammers
The main issue artists are facing is falling victim to fake Spotify playlist scams. There is also the issue of fake streams being generated by bots and fake profile followers, but that's another issue on its own.
Most of the time the curator will show off their number of followers on their playlist in order to convince you to take the deal. One of the most common scams is when a Spotify playlist owner promises a placement of a song on a playlist or on multiple playlists. In return, the playlist curator will ask for "donations" or just money for the song placement.
The reality is, you shouldn't pay for a guaranteed playlist placement. Alarm bells should be ringing in your head every time someone asks you to pay to join a playlist.
Why? These kinds of curators are only interested in money, and not in creating well-structured and legitimate Spotify playlists. Money is the only thing these curators care about.
Want to see the proof? Below are 3 examples of automatic email replies sent by playlist owners, with no song submissions attached to the email. Fake Spotify playlists suck big time. If you encounter an email like this, don't reply and move on.
Why You Shouldn't Buy Playlist Placements
Spotify curators that are selling placements don't really care about their playlist. They could take a hip-hop song and add it next to a heavy metal song they added a few minutes earlier.
In some cases, they create a network of playlists for different genres, but usually when curators manage their playlists, they prioritise the song placements based on artists who pay to get into their playlist, and not on song quality or genre. You will most likely find really low quality songs on these types of playlists, which results in becoming a playlist real users don't want to hear.
When there's no real users listening to a playlist, there's no genuine streams on Spotify for you, no new followers and you're not gaining any progress as an artist in the music industry.
Just Don't!!
No matter how many followers the playlist offered has, you should do your own research about the legitimacy of the playlist offered to you. In most cases the curator will offer you a playlist placement without exposing the link or the name of the playlist.
It's very important to remember that if you're considering a potential offer from a Spotify playlist owner and the offer looks too good to be true, it most likely is. Most of the information you get from these curators is just a trick to scam you out of your money. These offers can seem worthwhile, for example, “Get your music on a popular playlist with over 200,000 followers for just $50!!!”
Unfortunately, this is not the case and it is usually too good a story. There are no shortcuts especially in the competitive music business.
So How Do You Identify A Fake Playlist?
Here are some tips to help you spot scams when trying to get your songs on Spotify playlists.
Like we said, a big red flag are playlists that guarantee placements with payment. That's obvious. If you come across one of these offers, leave it.
Contact emails are usually easy to find - genuine curators don't publish their email in plain sight, they are hard to find. If a curator is advertising their email everywhere and it's listed in the Spotify playlist description, that's not a good sign. For example: "Send songs to: JackJones@gmail.com
Listen to the playlist and decide for yourself if it's a good quality playlist. A good playlist with well-curated songs in the same genre may be a legitimate playlist.
Analyze curator playlists to identify organic playlists vs fake playlists followers using sites such as Chartmetric and Spotontrack. If you want to learn more about how to identify fake Spotify playlists, check out our recent blog - 6 Ways to Identify Fake Spotify Playlists.
Check the curator accounts - If you're not sure about Chartmetric analysis results, check the curator's profile. Every curator with playlists has a profile account, look at their followers and see the amount of followers they have? Do their followers have profile pictures or are they fake followers?
Like we mentioned before, curators that are selling fake Spotify placements, don't really care about music. In some cases you will find one playlist that includes pop songs with hip hop artists, or Jazz artists with blues. Why would they care? You will never get to your target audience if you join one of these playlists
Buying Streams
Another factor you should be aware of and avoid at all cost is buying streams and/or followers. There are countless services that will offer you a quick way to bounce your new music streams number or boost your artist's profile followers. This is usually done by streaming farms and click farms, which were created to target streaming platforms like Spotify. Click farms are created when metrics, such as likes and followers are artificially inflated.
Why is it risky? Unlike other social media platforms, Spotify has a good reason to detect these fake streams. The platform pays artists streaming royalties based on their number of streams. For obvious reasons, Spotify will try to avoid paying royalties as much as it can, so tracing these fake artist's streams is very important for Spotify. Spotify's algorithm is trained to identify a fake growth rate in streams. Once it identifies a dramatic surge as fraudulent, it can remove your song from Spotify or shut down an artist's account.
So How Can You Promote Your Music On Real Spotify Playlists?
Online submission platforms, like One Submit, offer the opportunity for indie artists to upload and make use of Spotify playlist submissions, all based on their music genre of choice. When you upload a song to One Submit, you are submitting the song to a legitimate Spotify playlist owner. Spotify playlist curators will give you a written review after listening to your track, and if they like your song, they'll add it to their playlist. Artists can submit music to Spotify playlists, as well as send music to radio stations, music blogs, record labels, TIkTok influencers, YouTube channels and Deezer playlists (coming soon) We monitor all curators, playlists, channels, blogs and radio stations to ensure your songs reach genuine and legitimate curators within your music genre. This is clearly an excellent way to promote your music. Once you know how scammers operate, you can then take the necessary steps forward to find realistic and safe ways to promote your music effectively and efficiently.