Monthly Archives : February, 2018

How AI & Data Analytics could have prevented an amazing Spotify fraud

We`re not sure if you already have heard about this and if not, keep in mind that those couple of minutes will be more than worthy.

The Spotify Fraud

Unknown scammer, allegedly from Bulgaria generated about $3m revenue out of creating and continuously playing a couple of playlists with tracks with an average length of 43 seconds. Spotify is paying artists about $0.004 per play and the fraudster has registered around 1200 premium Spotify accounts, continuously rolling the playlists.

It is believed that such ‘performance’ was achieved via bots automating the skip and play game regarding the Spotify policy to pay for a listened track only its 30 seconds or more. This way, the playlists called ‘Soulful Music’ and ‘Music From The Heart’ became played so many times they made it to number 84 globally and 22 in the US in the playlists charts.