As streaming services have taken over the music industry, everybody within music’s ecosystem has dug around for loopholes in the system to make the entire process more lucrative for themselves. Every corner of the industry has done it, whether it’s the artists, the labels or the streaming services, but in Spotify’s case, they’re saying one report of them bending the system to benefit monetarily simply isn’t true.
After Vulture reported this week that Spotify created fake bands to make the slices of the money pie that go to legitimate artists smaller, and the slice that goes to Spotify larger, the streaming service has stepped in toe categorically deny the accusation. The streaming service released a statement to Billboard, saying “We do not and have never created ‘fake’ artists and put them on Spotify playlists.” The statement continues, saying “Categorically untrue, full stop. We pay royalties — sound and publishing — for all tracks on Spotify, and for everything we playlist. We do not own rights, we’re not a label, all our music is licensed from rightsholders and we pay them — we don’t pay ourselves.”
In fact, Spotify not only denies the claims of fraudulent activity, they also said they have “a team in place to constantly monitor the service to flag any activity that could be seen as fraudulent or misleading to our users.”
