Spotify Is Riddled With Fake Streams — Or Is It?

After a string of 'fake stream' scandals involving mega-stars like French Montana and G-Eazy, a serious question percolated within the music industry: how real are Spotify's stream counts? Vice went underground and found a shadowy network of 'underground stream farms' that fabricate play counts, raising serious questions about Spotify's numbers. Michael K. Williams, who led Vice's investigation, declared that the "entire industry has been compromised." But how corrupted are streaming numbers at Spotify -- or Apple Music, Amazon Music, or YouTube? We asked a company that has developed a sophisticated method for verifying stream counts by identifying statistical anomalies. Their CEO offered an entirely different version of what's happening with stream counts on major platforms like Spotify.

You can listen to Spotify Is Riddled With Fake Streams — Or Is It? online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Spotify Is Riddled With Fake Streams — Or Is It? is an episode from The Digital Music News Podcast by Paul Resnikoff.

This episode is 59:44 long.

This episode was published on Sep 29, 2022.

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