Streaming platforms have become the giants of the music industry with the rise of phones and other mobile devices. As a result of their domination of the industry, artists and music labels have shifted their music to the digital world. However, the shifting of music and other media to an online format has invited new problems not seen in physical media. One specific problem haunts the validity of streaming: the use of bots to boost artists’ streaming numbers.
Bots, which are online tools coded for a specific purpose, have become increasingly common, since online streams are easy to manipulate. Spotify artists can control bots to continually stream their music in the background, boosting listens and sales for music. Spotify usually cannot control these bots until after they have already been used to affect statistics such as first-week sales. Artists can easily take advantage of this rule, using bots to continually replay songs and therefore boosting stream counts.
“Botting streams could make artists look like they’re getting more views than they actually are,” junior Pranav Prasath explained. “It could also make people think artists are more popular than they actually are, and they, therefore, may listen to them more often.”
The classic concept of ‘herd mentality’ may be at play in this situation: more people may be encouraged to listen to artists that seem to have higher streaming numbers. This desire to listen to potentially popular artists can stem from a fear of missing out. This is clearly a positive effect for the artist using bots to boost streams; however, these boosted streams can come at a heavy cost.
In the short run, fabricating streams can help artists gain more listeners, streams and, therefore, more money. However, the practice has an undeniably negative long term effect, both on the artist and streaming platform.
“Botting streams could show that the artist is not true to his fans, they’re just lying to make more money and they just want more publicity,” Prasath said. “And then with Spotify and Apple Music, it can make them seem less credible.”
In the long run, when streams are found out to be fake, the ripple effects can be extreme. By inflating numbers, sales and streams, artists lose their credibility and audiences may wonder if their favorite artists are the people they say they are. In addition, music charts and streaming platforms, which are multi-billion dollar businesses, can lose their credibility and potentially lose traffic.
Since so much of streaming companies’ revenue is based on making music available commercially, falsifying streams can worsen listener count in the long run as the loss of credibility could drive core listeners to other platforms. These fake streams are empty numbers to encourage more people to listen, but losing these listeners to dishonest practices can affect reputation and future sales.
While many artists deceive their listeners, platforms are working to install softwares and roadblocks to stop faking streams from occurring and also remove them after the practice is done. By monitoring for suspicious patterns, checking for rapid increases and streaming and fining artists for fabricating streams, platforms have begun to play catch-up to the deceptive practices used to boost sales.
Streaming has become the most prominent way to listen to music. Anyone can stream music from anywhere, but dishonest practices have emerged just as fast as streaming has. Artists have been faking streams for years, and while it may seem beneficial to boost sales and casual listeners in the short term, artists lose their core fanbase and credibility in the long term.
