That time when Spotify deleted a ton of artist profiles and songs
Jul 03, 2021Not sure if you had heard this news but it was reported that allegedly on January 1, 2021 up to 750K songs were removed from Spotify. All of these songs were from independent artists and a majority of them use Distrokid as their distributer. To read more check out this article:
There are many possible reasons why this happened, but I wanted to focus more on what we can do to avoid our music being taken down. Most reports show that people who had music taken down were found to have purchased streams from 3rd party marketing companies. An example of this would be a company that promises a certain amount of streams for a certain amount of dollars. This goes against Spotify’s terms of service as it has many negative consequences.
Firstly, the streams gained are typically from bots that are not real fans or followers of the music. Secondly, Spotify pays per stream, so when these false streams are being generated it is causing Spotify to pay out earnings regardless of the source. Lastly, the Spotify algorithm is a major way that the platform shares new music to its users. If false streams are generated, this has a great potential to disrupt the validity and accuracy of the algorithm. I have learned also that once your account gets deleted or banned, it can be very difficult (if not impossible) to get it back up and running. So it’s very important to follow the platform guidelines to not jeopardize your account.
The good news is that this is very easily avoided. I would suggest to never pay for streams for a number of reasons and this current news is a great reminder. Now, there are certain indie curators who do have paid song review services that can lead to playlist placement. This is not illegal and should not result in accounts being shutdown. The accounts and songs that were taken off were only the ones who paid for streams directly.
As the music industry continues to change and evolve it’s difficult to know what to do in order to get our music out there. It is more common now to run ads through platforms like facebook to draw attention to our music. This is a completely legitimate way to promote music and I would suggest trying to learn how to do that instead of paying for streams. You could also reach out directly to curators which is a method I have used the most and had success with. This might not be the quickest, but it’s legit and works great over time. There are many great resources to learn how to promote your music without jeopardizing your account. If you have any questions about it I would be happy to answer the best I can.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this!
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