Distrokid starting 2021 off with a fake stream purge. 👀

Yikes.

— Noah Miller (@iamnoahmiller) January 2, 2021

Spotify removed music from their own platform for suspected “artificial streams.” Spotify's takedowns affect music from all distributors (not just DistroKid) as you can see from @SpotifyCares tweet below. We can help! 💙 Read more here: https://t.co/ofbLa4oNam 😫❤️❤️❤️❤️ https://t.co/ccH9nJGobR

— DistroKid (@DistroKid) January 3, 2021

Not sure what’s going on, but I seen a artist reply somewhere online that stated they were taken down and that they plus other artists they know never used any marketing companies for their music and they only had like 300 streams.

— Jflyymusic (@Jflyymusic1) January 3, 2021

What a mess. But who's to blame? I am in no way shape or form poking fun, accusing artists or putting down artists in this post. However, social media is not responding to these artists that way. 

I've seen several posts of "that's what you get for faking your streams." and "Maybe you should stop using bots" but there ARE instances that I have seen on the web of artists who are citing that they didn't even use marketing companies to promote and it was taken down anyway. 

Again, BUT WHO'S TO BLAME? My followers know I didn't trust Distrokid from the beginning. There was something wrong with the fact that Spotify had a stake with this distribution service and there is something REALLY WRONG with Spotify being owned by major labels.

According to Digital Music News article they stated that 

"Universal owns Digster, Sony owns Filtr, and Warner owns Topsify" 

Well, what are these sites? 

I find this very interesting that Topsify's terms of use hasn't been updated since 2009 but people still use it lol 

ANYWAY, I saw an amazing break down regarding Spotify from this 2012 blog post that literally predicted this day coming.

Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group own between six percent and seven percent of Spotify (Sony around 2.35 percent and Universal around 3.5 of Spotify...

Spotify Acquires Stake in Distrokid - Variety

So they admittedly, they know they aren't collecting all our royalties. We know they don't even plan to teach artists how to collect them.You would think that Distrokid would have this information available as well as options to promote and market properly and to authentic playlist curators.

Upload & sell your music on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon and Google Play | DistroKid

Spotify for Artists Terms and Conditions

Now, Playlist Curators who took money should be mostly held responsible. And shame on Spotify for taking so long to enforce your policies. I am almost certain that you saw the amount of websites and services that were popping up offering placement and curation for you to use the "artificial streams" line.