Musicians: How to protect yourself from false promises, fake streams and digital scam artists

From fake streams to false opportunities from major record labels, there is no shortage of scammers preying on the dreams of musicians hoping to move their careers forward.

We’ve all seen ads selling streams and social media followers, which could get you kicked off these platforms forever. Recently Hypebot featured a video reportedly taken inside a New York City stream farm that claims to regualry deliver tens of thousands of fake streams on Spotify for major label artists.

James Shotwell of Haulix, a platform that makes running legitimate promotional campaigns easy, fast, and secure, has been uncovering these kinds of scams for several years now and as such become a kind of go-to repository of bad behavior targeting musicians.

Shotwell also regularly shares how-to advice for musicians on the informative Haulix Daily blog which we often repost here on Hypebot,

Now he’s created a step-by-step guide and video to understand how music scammers operate and share real-world experiences, including screenshots of conversations and much more.

Check it out this much watch video.

MORE FROM JAMES SHOTWELL: How to guarantee that fans actually see your content

Bruce Houghton is Founder and Editor of Hypebot and MusicThinkTank and serves as a Senior Advisor to Bandsintown which acquired both publications in 2019. He is the Founder and President of the Skyline Artists Agency and a professor for the Berklee College Of Music.