Musicians, Check Your Spotify Artist Profile Right Now
A fake artist may have released music under your name to steal streaming revenue.
I look forward to my Release Radar from Spotify every week.
But not when artists like Lil Throat Cancer, Yung Hitler, and Jobba the Hutt have hijacked it.
As I was perusing my Release Radar the last few weeks, some of the songs sounded… strange, and they were from artists like the ones above. The production and sound quality were atrocious and sounded as if they had mixed (and mastered) their song on a pair of $10 Walmart earbuds. That bad.
Those artists didn’t release the music on their own. Instead, they “collaborated” with a bigger-named artist that I was following to garner streams from Spotify’s Release Radar.
So who are these cronies?
Fake artists.
Fake artists are real people behind a faux “artist name” and do not have a presence outside of streaming platforms. They do not have social media profiles or fans that purchase tickets to their shows.
According to iGroove Music, oftentimes the same producers and companies are behind fake artists. A company called Firefly based in Sweden has been under fire in Swedish headlines for this practice.
Firefly released music under 830 fake artists, per iGroove Music. They generated $7 million in revenue in 2021. Firefly’s CEO, Peter Classon, denied this in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter:
There is no direct relationship with Spotify or any other way that could affect the playlists. As for the number of songs on Spotify’s playlists, we defer to Spotify, which controls the process for how songs get on playlists.
Unfortunately, these fakes are nothing new and have been plaguing the music industry for years by stealing millions from hard-working musicians.
So how does the scam work?
Audio engineer and producer Bobby Owsinksi explained it perfectly in a Hypebot post:
The latest scam is incredibly simple – just name a popular artist as a featured artist on your release, regardless of whether that artist knows you even exist yet alone collaborates. As a result of doing this, the song ends up on Spotify’s Release Radar, which then alerts followers of the artist that they have a new release. Excited listeners then go listen to the song only to discover that their favorite artist is nowhere on the song, but by then it’s too late as a “listen” has been recorded and the scamming artist receives the commensurate royalty.
Until a number of fake artists started popping into my Release Radar every week, I was not aware of how bad this epidemic has gotten.
The first track that caught my eye was one called “Lepra Patient” by Tobu, a dance artist who rose to notoriety on NoCopyrightSounds. The artists collaborating with Tobu on “Lepra Patient” were Jobba the Hutt and Lil Throat Cancer.
Both of these disreputable artists have active Spotify and Apple Music profiles with music they’ve released, which is a bit disturbing considering a few of the song titles are equally as shameless as their artist names.
I notified Tobu via Instagram DM and did not receive a response. However, it appears “Lepra Patient” has been removed from his Spotify profile and a new artist page for Tobu was created so it doesn’t link to his original.
Tobu wasn’t the only artist in my Release Radar that got scathed by this scam.
The lights were turned down low, and it happened to DEV, too.
The “In The Dark” singer released a song titled “GRABBER.” Something seemed off, though.
A quick look at her artist page showed she hadn’t released anything of this style or imagery… ever.
Additionally, under the “written by” credits was a person named Nacho Lopez and the source was DEVILKIN, which is a real artist on Spotify.
According to DEVILKIN’s Spotify profile, their previous release was “Save Me From Myself” which came out on December 23, 2022.
Similar to Tobu’s release, it appears that this track no longer links to DEV’s official Spotify profile. Instead, it goes to DEVILKIN’s profile.
“GRABBER” is easy to chock up as a simple mistake either on DEVILKIN’s side, his distributor, or the DSP’s. Whatever music distributor DEVILKIN used to release “GRABBER” it’s likely that his artist name wasn’t entered completely or correctly, and that would explain why the track showed up under DEV’s profile. It certainly confused her followers.
A concerned Spotify user shared similar situations in the Spotify Community about fake artists and songs. Spotify says that there’s currently no technical solution that will prevent this from happening because they rely on metadata that artists submit.
Here’s Spotify’s response to the poster:
Currently, there's no technical solution in place that can prevent errors like this from happening, as we rely on submitted metadata. If you spot incorrect content, it's best to report it as described here. Make sure your report is clear. If you can't find an artist profile with the same name as the one you follow, it probably hasn't been created yet and is part of the reason the error occurred. Point that out in your report to ensure it can be processed efficiently.
But why would Spotify—and other DSPs—allow these types of detrimental mistakes?
Spotify has invested millions of dollars into AI. The major labels are pushing them to crack down on AI scraping technologies crawling their catalog. But Spotify themselves have been accused of creating fake artists—and putting them in playlists.
Music Business Worldwide editor Tim Ingham told NPR’s Andrew Flanagan:
The big question mark is: What is Spotify’s motivation? I do think, from the people who I’ve spoken to, that there’s a motivation there to save some money and to increasingly save money as the scale of streaming grows over time. I also find this question [about] artistic quality interesting. If Spotify truly believed in the science of a ‘sleep’ playlist, it kind of does make sense that you would ask someone to create something bespoke, based on data you’ve seen.
It’s also worth noting that there are more than 100,000 songs added to streaming services every day. However, with Spotify’s money, talent, and advanced algorithms, I’m confident they could solve this issue, but I don’t think they want to.
And artists are taking the blows.
Even major artists aren’t untouchable. Fabian Mazur and the legendary Eurodance group Eiffel 65 were roped in.
Fabian Mazur released a track titled “PUSHER,” which featured an unknown artist named Level.
When clicking through to Level’s profile, I noticed they only had two followers and a handful of music released in capital letters. “PUSHER” was the only release that I could find where they “collaborated” with a bigger artist to game Spotify’s Release Radar.
Level’s god-awful track makes me cringe harder than a poorly timed-joke. If you want to give this abundance of steaming hot garbage a listen, be my guest.
Dance group Eiffel 65 fell victim to this scam and shows that artists of all levels of stardom are susceptible.
Eiffel 65’s biggest hit is their song “I’m Blue (Da Ba Dee),” which came out in 1998. The track sold over 8 million copies and dominated charts around the world.
The group’s newest track features a collaborator named Vaecii, who had 204 monthly listeners a few weeks ago. Now, about three weeks later, he has just shy of 13,000. Eiffel 65 on the other hand has just under 5.6 million monthly listeners.
Vaecii’s had some impressive growth, so he’s either an impeccable marketer (unlikely) or he’s purchasing streams and followers (likely) and gaming Release Radar.
It’s easier to write off DEVILKIN’s release because they seem like a legit artist. The others are using scam tactics to steal streaming revenue and bloat their numbers. And Vaecii’s numbers have exponentially increased in a short amount of time, which signals to me that they’re purchasing followers.
Followers and streams should never be the goal of streaming services. Passive listeners don’t purchase tickets to shows or merchandise. I recommend artists focus on building a tight-knit community.
Instead, artists like Lil Throat Cancer, Yung Hitler, and Jobba the Hutt have created deplorable artist names so they can release ghastly music and harm real artists.
Unfortunately, this scam isn’t just “collaborating” with real artists. It has evolved and become more difficult to catch.
In July of last year, Billboard shared the story of an artist named DVRST. The 18-year-old producer’s song “Close Eyes” went viral and racked up a jaw-dropping 155 million streams on Spotify.
According to Billboard, scammers would upload duplicate copies of “Close Eyes” with identical cover art. This made it easier to steal streams and royalties because DVRST’s fans were unable to tell the difference between the official song and fake ones.
Elias Leight from Billboard elaborates:
But some people are exploiting this system for nefarious purposes: They find songs from independent artists that are performing well and upload a copy so that, after track linking merges the two versions, some of that streaming revenue might be diverted into their pockets. In the case of a high-performing single like “Close Eyes,” real money is at stake — the song brings in more than $50,000 per month.
Artists and their management teams are finding this to be one giant, neverending game of Whack-a-Mole, except this one is costing them a lot of money and time.
Despite Spotify claiming to take copyright infringement seriously, the problem is continuing to rear into artists’ profile pages and wallets.
Copyright infringement is an industry-wide issue that Spotify takes seriously. We have robust, active mitigation measures in place that identify bad actors, limit their impact and penalize them accordingly. We are continuously evolving our efforts to limit the impact of such individuals on our service.
If Spotify really took copyright infringement seriously, the process to report infringements and wrongdoings would be more efficient. Perhaps Mr. Ek should invest in mitigating this issue for artists instead of investing $100 million into AI warfare technology.
How to report fake artists and copyright infringement on Spotify—to a real human!
This issue could be minimized if we all worked together and helped one another out, so let’s report fraud and scammers.
In Spotify’s macOS application, go to the artist’s profile. Select the ellipses next to “following” and click “Report.” It’ll take you here.
To report offensive music or podcast content, you can speak to a real human at Spotify here. Fill out the form, and a Spotify advisor will speak with you.
These fake artists are infringing on copyright owners’ rights by distributing their content without permission, which is punishable by up to $250,000 per infringement in the US.
Winamp CEO Talks Web3 and Outdated Creator Communities: Podcast
Last week, I released my bi-weekly podcast episode with Winamp CEO, Alexandre Saboundjian. Alex and I talk about building communities around creators and artists, and how musicians can take advantage of the tools available to them to build their fanbase.
Watch and listen to our conversation below.
If you have any questions about anything in this post, or if you have a separate issue, respond to this email. I’d be happy to help you!
I made this post free to read because it’s important music professionals have access to the information—and I don’t want artists being paywalled to get helpful information. I don’t believe in gatekeeping. If you found this helpful or want to support my work, subscribing to this newsletter is the best way to show support.