A Bulgarian user managed to raise a lot of money by scamming the most used music download platform in the world. All thanks to fake playlists.
If undermining crypto-currency without authorization seems to be the trendy scam, it seems that this Spotify user has found another interesting way to make money. Moreover, it is not even certain that the practice is illegal.
Revealed by Music Business Worldwide, the affair began in October 2017 with the creation of two playlists on the platform: "Soulful Music" and "Music from the Heart". At first glance, nothing is out of the ordinary since reading lists are created all over the world every day. However, the author of the scam did not create these playlists simply to listen to them during his daily journeys, but to earn money from them.
In total, the two playlists gathered 476 songs and each track lasted about forty seconds. This gives the Spotify monetization system time to activate. Given that he owned the titles contained in these playlists, he was entitled to the copyright for each listening. Only, he didn't stop on such a good path. Very quickly, the two playlists broke listening records and even reached 22nd and 11th place among the most listened to reading tracks in the United States last September.
Where the case attracted Spotify's interest was when the firm noticed that only less than 2000 Internet users were following the "Soulful Music" playlist. It turns out that the Bulgarian had created 1200 false accounts with a paid subscription in order to listen to his own songs. And above all, to earn as much royalties as possible. As a reminder, Spotify pays $0.004 to the rightful owners, per song and per listening.
In total, the scam will have raised between $290,000 and $415,000 per playlist. This is enough to largely refund the 1200 paid Spotify accounts.
While the streaming platform confirmed the scam, it did not announce any punitive measures since it is not certain that this practice is illegal. Spotify has still removed some of the tracks from both playlists.
However, there are other more reliable and less questionable methods…
