In 1 week, this bot farm generated 5.5M fake streams of 244 songs

A Danish man has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for using fake accounts and bot-generated streams to defraud streaming services of 2 million kroner ($290,000 USD) in royalties.

Fake streams dilute the royalty pool and lower payments to legitimate artists.

In one week alone, the defendant “played” 244 tracks 5.5 million times, with 20 accounts responsible for most of the streams. According to the Danish Rights Alliance, he had 69 accounts with music streaming services, including 20 with Spotify. At one point, his fake streams made him the 46th highest-earning musician in Denmark.

While he created most of the music streamed between 2013 and 2019, 37 tracks were altered versions of Danish folk songs, with their tempo and pitch changed, Maria Fredenslund, CEO of the Danish Rights Alliance, told Wired.

“The convict and his company have, for many years, at the expense of other music artists and rights holders, received royalties that they should never have received,” Amir Amirian, special prosecutor at Denmark’s National Unit for Special Crime, said in a statement.

A brief history of fake streams

The general public first learned of streaming bots and so-called stream farms in 2020, and Spotify and other streamers vowed to stop them.

According to a study by France’s National Music Center, there will be 1 to 3 billion fake streams on major music platforms in 2021.

Hypebot published this unverified video of a music stream farm in 2022.

@wave_walker_music Nothing is What It Seems🤔 #fyp #foryoupage #michaelkwilliams #conspiracytiktok #rigged #learnontoktok #thetruth #viral #newmusic #wave ♬ original sound – Wave_Walker_Music

Bruce Houghton is the Founder and Editor of Hypebot, a Senior Advisor at Bandsintown, President of the Skyline Artists Agency, and a Berklee College Of Music professor.