What is artificial streaming?

What is artificial streaming?

Artificial streaming, commonly known as streaming fraud, is the manipulation of play counts within a digital music service using non-organic means, such as bots or streaming farms.

While artificial streaming can come from many different sources, it is often a result of inorganic promotion that aims to get artists more streams, followers, downloads, playlist placements, or general exposure using fraudulent methods.

Artists should also keep in mind that playing their own music on a loop for an extended period of time is considered to be a form of artificial streaming.

An artificial stream doesn’t reflect a genuine fan listening to your music. Any streaming activity that is not organic or appears to be a manipulation of streams can fall into this category and should be avoided.

What are the consequences of artificial streaming?

There’s no better way to rip off the band-aid than by talking about how artificial streaming can affect artists’ royalty payments. Digital music services have methods for identifying artificial streaming and they will not pay out for any streams that they’ve deemed to be artificial or inorganic.

If digital music services determine that your content has been involved in artificial streaming, they may take additional actions such as correcting your streaming numbers to remove artificial streams, and/or removing your content from their platforms. (You can see what Spotify has to say about this here).

Engaging in artificial streaming (or any other activities that involve misrepresentation, misconduct, deception, fraud, or other inappropriate conduct) is also a violation of UnitedMasters’ Terms of Use and will result in the suspension or cancelation of your UnitedMasters account and the withholding or forfeiture of funds.

All in all, while it may be tempting to inflate your stream count, doing so via inorganic means is never worth it, as it can result in your royalties being decreased, your releases being taken down from stores, or your UnitedMasters account being closed.