I contacted Spotify again, and they told me there was nothing they could do and that I’d have to check with you.
I had more or less decided to give up, so I wrote to the promotion agency I had worked with to see if there was any news from their side and asked for a possible refund of the campaign, here is their reply:
Hi Kevin,
Really sorry for not sending this across earlier as it’s been on file for a while.
What we learnt was that Spotify was unable to differentiate between traffic coming from outside its platform (In this case IG and Facebook) and bot farms. Spotify then filtered out artists who they regarded as part of their partnership sphere (certain record labels for example) and avoided removing streams on those tracks, but assumed all other streams were bots. So anyone who earned streams from outside Spotify AND was not a partner had their streams removed according to their algorithms. This no longer seems to be happening so presumably Spotify has either updated their artificial stream detection algorithms to be better at distinguishing bot streams and organic streams, or they have done away with it altogether.
The screenshots demonstrate that our campaign was legitimate and generated real organic traffic, the Meta receipts are there and the amount of traffic the ads generated are visible too so the removal of streams was a Spotify error. We have been successful with artists on our own partner distributor at remunerating royalties that were wrongfully withheld by providing Spotify’s Content Team with the evidence of another artist who experienced the same issue (using similar screenshots to the ones attached). They did not reinstate the streams on the artists account unfortunately as it just wasn’t possible to do so, but they did recognise the streams were real, and paid out the royalties accordingly.
This was an industry wide issue and affected millions of artists running ads and so we can’t accept responsibility for stream removal because we did not do anything outside Spotify’s T&C’s.
What you can do though is reach out to your distributor, and ask that they contact Spotify’s Content Team on your behalf, share with them the screenshots attached and demand that you at least recoup the royalties that were withheld. Spotify may be able to reinstate accurate streaming figures at this point as well.
Again, I’m sorry that you and many other artists experienced this issue. We’re here to help if you have any other questions,
Kind regards,
[…]
I’ve included the screenshots below.
Could you please contact Spotify’s Content Team?
Spotify is the sole entity responsible for verifying your streams and applying penalties to your revenue. Any dispute you may want to raise about their decision needs to be addressed to them directly, not us.
As we already told you multiple times in our previous conversations; as a distributor we do not take part in the calculation or validation of your revenue. That’s entirely up to the platforms and - through the monthly sales data we upload on your dashboard - we only publish the reports the share with us. I’m sincerely sorry that you promotional campaign was categorized as non-organic (whether that’s legitimate or not is up to Spotify), but there’s nothing we can do to challenge that decision.
I don’t like the way Carlos handles cases, he doesn’t understand my point of view and systematically questions my actions, for example: “be careful with the promotional tools you use”. I’ve explained to him almost three time that this is a legitimate agency, and I said it again in my last message. The fact that some of their artists have managed to win against Spotify with their distributor should be enough to legitimize my request. So I find his reaction very disrespectful. I’m within my rights and I’m doing things the right way. Carlos should stop criticizing customers.
I don’t need feedback on my situation with Carlos, I just want a different person to talk to so that everything works out for the best for me and for you. There’s no need to get into polemics, he’s surely appreciated by other customers and does his job as well as possible. If you’ve been in customer service for a while, you must know that sometimes changing the person you talk to helps resolve a case. Not everyone understands everyone, and that’s OK.
I would particularly like to know if you can contact Spotify Content Team, like other distributors did?
And also what’s your opinion on the legitimacy of the campaign now that I’ve been able to provide proof?
Hello @WOLZT I understand this issue matters to you and we are here to help. Please understand that we all here act with the same goal of supporting our artists and labels. However, as said, our intervention is limited as we do not have legal responsibilities. This said, Carlos and I checked further your situation and we would like to check on your streams, that is the only area where we can actually intervene.
Would you mind sharing a screenshot of your Analytics on your Spotify For Artist for the specific release from:
Dear @WOLZT, we checked the trends and royalties we receive from Spotify and the streams are matching. However, there is a very important thing to acknowledge and this might feel unequal but it is the reality: the number of streams visible on Spotify for artist is not equal to the paid streams. The streams that are actually paid are usually less and it depends on many factors. Without giving you a precise number (as it is stated in your sales report that you can download in your dashboard), the paid streams are almost the 13% of the total and only the music that is listened for more than 30seconds are counted for payment. I can disclose that we observe a high skip rate, this means that the most of the audience has skipped your track within the first 30seconds. Concerning the matter that you reached out to us for, I must reinforce what Carlos was saying… Spotify has their own detecting tool and despite the existence of platforms like META or other music-related promotion services, it seems the shop is not able to differentiate or let’s say, allow such platforms to operate. This means that once Spotify detects a different pattern than the usual, like a sudden peak of streams instead of a constant increase, they will see it as a red flag and check more. However, the pattern is January is way more sustainable than the month of November, so keep going!
To conclude, we observe the same number of streams given on your Spotify For Artist and the actual number of paid streams are to be found in your sales report. Since last year Spotify is sending us reports of fraudulent releases (where they observed fraudulent activities) and you are not in such lists, this means that Spotify did not label your streams as fraudulent but they might have removed the number of those that they found redundant (like streams in autoplay, as this is also something happening. This is the only information we can disclose and we can only have access to data we receive. Saying that, we hope that this clears the situation a bit more and we must suggest you to check with Spotify support to know better how they behave when there are paid ads on tracks, as this is not an area of our expertise.
Have a great day and I ll leave this thread open for a final response.
Thank you for your feedback but I would hope that you would contact Spotify to at least bring me their response, which if it went your way would potentially put an end to this issue.
The explanation indicating that the songs were not listened to for more than 30 seconds is false, it says here that they are not counted under 30 seconds:
It’s not possible that Spotify counts listening that are too short and then removes them, it’s the first time I’ve heard such an idea and it’s absurd to me.
I didn’t deploy the banner on the first print screen, but take a look:
It doesn’t say it was too short or anything, and the Spotify article about artificial streaming doesn’t say anything about listening too short either :
Please contact the Spotify Content Team, it’s the only way out of this mess. This is what other distributors have done with artists in my case, and it has unblocked the situation. You need to show them the images from the Meta ad campaign to prove that the listening was legitimate, and give me a print screen of their response, that’s all I ask, you just need to send an email in the end, it doesn’t take much time, I can write it for you if you need; I can also pay you for it if we need to go that far.
Hello @WOLZT , thanks for your patience, we had to involve our Trust & Safety team who is directly checking on streams activities and it is in contact with Spotify. As this is confidential information, I will direct to you via DM and will close this thread.
