Spotify Cracks Down On Botted Streams But Won't Reveal Which Artists They Punished

Spotify is the world's leading music streaming service, and represents all of the best and worst things about the music industry today to a tee. One thing they seem committed to fixing, though, is the prevalence of fake streams and stream-botting on the platform. According to chart data, the company removed "notable streaming volume" from songs across all genres for the third month in a row, a consistent practice they began this February. Now that we're in April, fans have more and more questions about who this is really about. Of course, hip-hop fans have an obvious example: the expansive and zombie-fied Kendrick Lamar and Drake beef.




The last update we got on that was Drake's legal team's supposed plan to retract their "Not Like Us" botting claims in their legal pursuit of UMG. This is by no means proof of no wrongdoing, and we don't even know if the 6ix God's lawyer was sincere in saying this. Attorney Michael Gottlieb said his team plans to retract those Spotify allegations while demanding the court uphold the discovery process in this case, which they did.




Read More: Drake Fans Believe His Recent Chart Placements Are A Spotify Conspiracy

How Much Does Spotify Pay Artists?

Spotify has removed notable streaming volume from tracks across genres for the third month in a row:

February 2025
March 2025
April 2025 pic.twitter.com/UaLp4aSfaG
— chart data (@chartdata) April 3, 2025

As such, a lot of people immediately tied this general, vague, and all-genre-encompassing Spotify move to this Kendrick Lamar and Drake situation, even though nothing concretely ties this together. Similar botting allegations in hip-hop recently attacked artists like Doechii, but they extend far beyond the scope of the culture into every other musical style and community. While Spotify abuses their artists, paying them between $0.003 and $0.005 per stream, these numbers still add up for the larger artists who are able to garner millions of streams with ease. Also, algorithmically, stream-botting gives artists with more resources an advantage in terms of spreading their content quickly.




With all this in mind, the system generating cash for Spotify and keeping most artists down is far too big of a problem for a simple fake stream sweep to solve. Perhaps that's why fans are very curious to tie this to a specific artist, so they don't have to think about the big picture. We doubt we will ever get true clarity on this.




Read More: Doechii Seemingly Combats Industry Plant Shade During Billboard Woman Of The Year Speech




[via]
The post Spotify Cracks Down On Botted Streams But Won't Reveal Which Artists They Punished appeared first on HotNewHipHop.



via: https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/899717-spotify-botted-streams-wont-reveal-artists-punished-music-news