Contents:
Use Chartmetric and SpotOnTrack
The curator has multiple playlists that all have roughly the same number of followers
The curator has large playlists but hardly any followers for him/herself
The curator and the curator’s followers often have similar names and often no profile pictures
The curator sells playlists placements for money
Playlist does not appear on the ‘Discovered On’ on an artist’s profile
Find Out How To Identify A Fake Playlist On Spotify
Once upon a time there was a guy who wanted to make a quick buck using his Spotify playlist. Let’s call him Jerry from Texas. Unfortunately, Jerry only had 180 real followers on his Spotify playlist. This would not get him very far.
So Jerry decided to do some research and he found out that there are people out there in this bizarre world we live in, that will follow your playlist for money. He thought it would be a great idea to make his playlist look as if he had 50K followers, where in actual fact, only 180 of them are real Spotify followers.
So of course Jerry thought this was a perfect opportunity to sell song placements for his new “successful” and “well established” playlist. So Jerry, being the selfless guy he is, went online and found Rajesh from Mumbai, who for just $25 will add 10K followers to Jerry’s playlist.
So Jerry started buying 10K followers every month (point A on the chart below) and after a while, Jerry’s Spotify Playlist gained a whopping 50 thousand followers.
WOW, WAY TO GO JERRY!! YOU “EARNED” IT!!!
Jerry started offering playlist promotion through his flashy new website, “I will add your song onto my 50K followers Spotify playlist for just $49”.
Indie artists started using his service believing that his playlist would generate
streams for them.
Jerry started rolling in the cash and felt like the man.
Back to the Indian dude, one day, Rajesh received a better offer for his bot Spotify accounts and decided to move them from Jerry’s playlist to someone else's playlist.
(Check out point B on the chart)
Emerging artists, we know how hard it is to be discovered in the music industry, but you all must remember: Do not fall victim to these scammers like Jerry and his fake Spotify playlist, it’s strictly fraud, and it won't move you forward in your music career, artists featured on a fake Spotify playlists will not provide you organic streams or followers, in the best case scenario it will boost up your song with a useless bot streaming and fake non real fans.
How to avoid this kind of fraud?
Listed below are some of the best ways to identify and avoid fake Spotify playlists, most of these tips can be used prior to joining playlists. All music artists that are considering getting their song included on a Spotify playlists should read this.
1. Use Chartmetric and SpotOnTrack
A great way to go behind the scenes and view hidden data of Spotify playlists is by using websites such as Charmetric or Spotontrack. These websites allow you to check the growth of a playlist, and help you determine if there are any noticeably large and unrealistic changes in the growth of the playlist, like Jerry’s.
These websites can help you identify which playlists are likely to be fake.
It's not 100% bullet proof but in most cases it will give you a first clue whether the playlist is legit.
2. The curator have multiple playlists that all have roughly the same number of followers
If you come across a Spotify curator that has multiple playlists and all of their playlists have similar numbers of followers, it could be some indication that these followers are not genuine and are fake accounts. If however, you see multiple playlists from a curator that has a different number of followers, then it can be seen as more legitimate and organic playlists.
Again, this is not 100% fact for all the curators, we've encountered legit playlists with similar number of followers from the same curator, but this is not likely.
3. The curator has large playlists but hardly any followers for him/herself
It can be seen as common knowledge that if a curator has a popular playlist with a large number of monthly listeners, that the curator him/herself would in turn also have a fairly large following. It would be considered very odd and suspicious if the curator would have a popular playlist with a large following, and a very low personal following, thus one can only assume that its a fake Spotify playlist with fake streams and fake followers.
Always make sure to check out the playlist owners Spotify profile
4. The curator’s followers often have similar names and often no profile pictures
Most legitimate playlist curators with a popular playlist would usually have a profile picture on their personal page. The followers of the playlist would also have profile pictures and all have different names as they are all different Spotify account users.
If you see any playlist, and see that the curator of the playlist does not have a profile picture, and nor does the majority of their followers.
Then you should consider this playlist to be fake, and even more so if the names of the playlist followers are very similar to each other.
5. The curator sells playlists placements for money
If the playlist you consider uploading your songs to, accepts any of your songs no matter the genre or quality of it, the playlist can be considered fake and can be seen as suspicious. You most likely won't get any streams or monthly listeners from these kind of playlists.
In some cases they will offer you a specific number of streams which can counted for a fake streams. Genuine curators managing good playlists in the music business are usually and quite often selective about the songs they accept for a placement on their Spotify playlists.
Always ask the curator for the particular playlist he intend to add your song into, check his social media accounts, if you seeing 20K followers on facebook or Twitter and you don't see any likes or views to his posts, its a big red flag.
6. Playlist does not appear on the ‘Discovered On’ on an artist’s profile
If you would like to examine a specific playlists, pick one of the artists that are on this playlists, go into his artist's profile, active playlists will appear on the ‘Discovered On’ from the artist’s profile.
You will constantly need to check if the playlist appears on the ‘Discovered On’ section, of the top artists that have playlist placements.
It is best to avoid playlists that don’t appear on the ‘Discovered On’ section. These playlists are not all 100% fake, but they will not help you that much when wanting to promote your music.
Fake Spotify playlists have no benefit for any indie artist wanting to promote their music. The sooner you identify a fake playlist, the quicker you can rule it out and find a better and real one that you will benefit from.
On our platform One Submit, we help artists submit music to Spotify playlists (genuine only obviously) YouTube channels, TikTok influencers, Blogs, Radio Stations and Record Labels.
Good luck!