Fake Songs on Spotify!

[Motown Eddie]

Info from SoulTracks.com-

So, there you were, checking out new music on your Spotify or Apple Music account, when all of a sudden you were floored seeing the brand new single from Jill Scott or Phyllis Hyman or Ledisi or Chante Moore or Kelly Price. What's up with that?

Well, you received an even bigger shock when you clicked on the song, and what you heard was a cheaply made, electronic pablum of a song, likely made using AI, with no Jill Scott or Phyllis Hyman in sight. You [along with a lot of other folks], are the victim of the latest "fake song" scam on the streaming services. These consist of nefarious characters trying to trick us all into listening to these songs that we expect are from our favorite singers. And if you listen to one of these songs more than 30 seconds, they get paid the approximately $0.003 that Spotify or Apple pays for a spin. And they try to earn as much as they can before the real artists can get the streaming service to pull the song -- which can take weeks or even months.
There have always been fake songs on the streaming services, but it appears to have increased to a new level. This week 20% of my Release Radar playlist is fake. These songs tend to have generic covers of clouds or mountains bearing a simple song title and a famous artist's name. And they're copyrighted by such unknown organizations as Pacifiique Ngirinshuti Music or Ndinaye Eric Music. Are these trick songs working? The fake Jill Scott song had earned around 10,000 listens on Spotify in its first day. That translates into about $3 in streaming fees for that one song on one service for one day. Not a lot, but, with dozens of fake songs on multiple streaming services, you can see how it could add up to thousands of dollars of revenue over a fairly short period.


We've received notes from confused SoulTracks readers, wondering about these, and we're just a frustrated as you are. I get it that the real artists or their fans can contact the streaming services and try to get the songs pulled, but that is laborious and could take weeks [or more] to get resolved [by the way, here are instructions to notify Spotify of an artist identification error]. The real key is going to be for the services to do a better job up front in determining the validity of submissions made under artist names. This is the dark side of the automated ease with which anyone can submit music to one of the streaming services. Let your favorite streaming service know; hopefully, this latest fiasco can instigate a better process for adding new music.

[Danno]

Have you heard any instances reported on Amazon out of interest. I tried Spotify for three months but wasn't impressed with the sound quality so switched back. I don't recall noticing any scams. I presume they're obvious? Poor quality?

[Motown Eddie]

Have you heard any instances reported on Amazon out of interest. I tried Spotify for three months but wasn't impressed with the sound quality so switched back. I don't recall noticing any scams. I presume they're obvious? Poor quality?

No; I haven't heard any instances of 'fake songs' on Amazon [or any other music streaming service]. In fact, the piece that I posted from Soul Tracks is the first time I heard of 'fake songs' being posted on Spotify.

[Boogiedown]

Related : I’ve noticed the use of similar sounding but not true originals of songs being played overhead in stores and on commercials. Some recent movie advertised using LAST DANCE with someone almost sounding like Donna.

it occurred to
me . Todays youth have no affinity to these long ago artists. They sort of know the songs but could care less who
it is singing them. It doesn’t matter.

[Danno]

Related : I’ve noticed the use of similar sounding but not true originals of songs being played overhead in stores and on commercials. Some recent movie advertised using LAST DANCE with someone almost sounding like Donna.

it occurred to
me . Todays youth have no affinity to these long ago artists. They sort of know the songs but could care less who
it is singing them. It doesn’t matter.

You could have a point there. You get to a certain age and you've seen several cover versions of your favourite songs over the years. I think the version you hear first is the one you most identify with unless someone does a radical makeover that really gets your attention. However, if you go on spotify/apple/amazon and a track is listed by Donna, that's who it should be. Listed by Donna Soundalike, fair enough, you makes your choice. Might even generate more clicks. If I stumbled over a cover of Last Dance, I'd possibly give it a spin out of interest.

[soulster]

This is just another reason why I don't use streaming services for my music. And, besides, anytime I would see a new single by Phyllis Hyman, I would know something was up. She's been dead for a few decades.

[PeaceNHarmony]

I did have an experience or two with Spotify of these falsified links. That was before their support of racist, homophobic podcasters became widely known and I switched to Tidal. As of this writing I have not had a similar situation with Tidal [[which has considerable better sound quality than Spotify ...)

[ralpht]

Don't get me started on those thieves. As a producer they once represented my productions. That is until I did a study of what they were paying in royalties. Here is a comparative example: At Motown I would receive 5 cents a single in payment. At that time, five cents was pretty much a standard rate in the business and very fair. Spotify's rate for a single download was something like .0005 cents. At that rate, if I had a million seller it probably wouldn't pay me enough to get a McDonalds burger WITHOUT fries. Suffice it to say I bailed. I wish them nothing but the worst for ripping off producers and writers. They have contributed to what is wrong in the record business today.