Spotify is the order of the day as far as the way music is shared and consumed. It well eclipses its closest competitors and if you hope to make it as an artist, success on this platform is crucial. But beware, there is a growing number of people on Fiverr who promise Spotify success through artificially inflating your streaming numbers. However, fake streams can significantly hurt your profile pages and damage your success as a music artist.
You Get What You Pay For
You can find just about anything on Fiverr. It is an online community of freelancers of all disciplines willing to exchange their services for money. There is a an entire section devoted to buying Spotify plays, where you can purchase Spotify plays from 'music promotion experts'.
"15-20k Guaranteed plays on 12 Playlists for $50 - get your music heard!"
“I will promote your Spotify song to our playlist with 50 thousand followers and make it go viral. ”
“Organic Spotify promotion services. USA audience only. 100k followers. Real Engagement"
Before you go in thinking that you can pay a measly $5 and get your song heard by 15,000 adoring listeners, let me spoil it for you. They are all fake. Any promotion that guarantees a specific amount of plays is a guaranteed scam.
What these promotions are actually doing is adding your track to a playlist with several other popular artists and running bots through the playlist in order to build the streams on your track.
Your numbers may go up, but there won’t actually be any interaction with potential fans on the other side, and that’s really what you need to succeed.
Some providers even offer ‘Organic Promotion". You know what "organic promotion" means? It means they don't use bots. That's all.
In other words, instead of bots they pay people in a foreign country to click a button. So some guy in Thailand gets paid a penny to click a link which opens your song in Spotify while he's sitting on the toilet.
Buying Plays Hurts Your Spotify Algorithm
Getting your song added to the algorithmically generated Spotify playlists like Your Daily Mix, Release Radar, Radio and Discover Weekly can help you reach thousands of new fans daily. Buying plays introduces stats that don’t make sense. Spotify algorithms focuses on more stats than just plays. Spotify analyzes how people react to your music. They take into account how long they listened to it, how often they save it, or added it to one of their personal playlists or if your account was followed by the listener. The more people engage with your song, the more Spotify’s algorithm will introduce it to new people. This is vital to flourishing in the Spotify ecosystem.
Buying plays destroys your chance of Spotify introducing your music to the people most likely to enjoy it. You’ve gained zero fans and screwed up your Spotify algorithm.
Leading Your Potential Fans On
Some musicians knowingly buy fake plays to boost their numbers to give off the appearance of having more fans than they actually do, which gives them more credibility with talent buyers and accessibility when booking venues. But, most music fans and professionals in the music industry have become smart enough to see right through those fake streams and attempts to manipulate stats. And it’s a massive turn-off!
It may look real impressive when you go to book your first show with 100k plays/downloads/etc, however when only 3 people show up to your show, its not quite that impressive. You also don’t sell any merchandise or even have a decent social media following to match.
Your page will have the nice shiny numbers but you will still be left with a feeling of emptiness due to the fact that the content that your worked so hard to create was not actually listened too.
It Is In Violation of Spotify’s Terms of Agreement
If you want to succeed on Spotify, you should probably play by their rules, and getting bot plays as a way to inflate your stats is in direct violation. Their legal terms explicitly lays out their stance:
“The following is not permitted for any reason whatsoever: ... 8. artificially increasing play counts, follow counts or otherwise manipulating the Service by (i) using any bot, script or other automated process, (ii) providing or accepting any form of compensation (financial or otherwise), or (iii) any other means; ... 13. selling a user account or playlist, or otherwise accepting or offering to accept any compensation, financial or otherwise, to influence the name of an account or playlist or the content included on an account or playlist.”
If you are found in violation of these terms, you may be banned from the platform entirely, and what could be more damaging to your chances of succeeding than that? Chances are that if you find someone willing to do a hack-job on Fiverr to get you a few nice numbers, Spotify has already prepared itself for such cheap tactics, and you’ll be marked in a second. Don’t worry, there’s always plenty of room on Deezer.
Conclusion
Paying for streams on Fiverr is one of the worst things you can do with your money. It’s dishonest, ineffective, and it’s against the rules. What you want to be doing (in addition to making good music) is actually engaging with fans in a meaningful and personal way. Make them want your music. Create content. Package your music as an experience to all facets of your personality. In other words, you need to work harder. You can’t just pay some guy on Fiverr a couple bucks to skyrocket your career.
(Related: The 5 Best Ways To Promote Your Music In 2020)
Also, it should be clear now that Spotify streams don’t account for much unless there is some genuine interaction behind those numbers. While bots can still tilt the scales of online discourse, their shit isn’t too hard to spot when you know what you’re looking for. The only thing that’s going to get you where you want to be in your career is plain old hard work. That’s what puts the butts in the seats, so to speak.
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