Botted Playlist Checklist: 9 Red Flags to Check Before You Pay Any Curator

Last checked: 8 October 2026Sources: 14, dated at the end

Disclosure: MusicPromoLab sells music promotion. Every claim below links to its source at the end.

What does Spotify count as a botted or artificial stream?

Spotify defines an artificial stream as one “that doesn’t reflect genuine user listening intent”, including any attempt to manipulate the service with bots or scripts. A botted playlist is one whose followers, plays or both come from that kind of activity instead of real people.

Under Spotify’s policy, detected artificial streams earn nothing, don’t count toward public numbers or charts, and don’t help recommendation algorithms. In worse cases the song is pulled from playlists, your distributor can warn, fine or suspend you, or the track is removed. DistroKid adds that a botted playlist can cause this “even if you did not pay for placement”, so check any playlist you land on.

What red flags can you spot in the offer before you pay?

Three, and none of them needs data: a guarantee, a fee just to be considered, and a curator you can’t trace. All three come from a careful read of what is being sold.

1. The offer guarantees streams, followers or a placement

The clearest signal. Spotify says any service that guarantees streams, Spotify followers or playlist placement in exchange for money “is not legitimate and should be avoided.” DistroKid puts it in capitals: don’t pay for any service that offers more streams, more followers or playlist placement. CD Baby notes that paid services offering “guaranteed” streams or placements “often can result in artificial streaming activity, whether intentional or not.”

How to check: read the sales page and the curator’s message. A promised number of streams, adds or followers is a guarantee however it’s worded.

2. You’re asked to pay just to be “considered”

Some curators skip the word “guarantee” and charge a fee to review your song for their own playlists. Spotify says these services charge money to be “considered” for user playlists without guaranteeing a placement, and Spotify tells artists to “be highly skeptical” because they “may deploy artificial streaming tactics.” Spotify’s User Guidelines also prohibit accepting any compensation to influence the content of a playlist.

How to check: find out who owns the playlists and who receives your money. A fee paid straight to the playlist’s owner is the pattern Spotify describes. The SubmitHub vs Groover vs Playlist Push comparison sets out what the big submission platforms charge for and what they promise.

3. You can’t trace the curator anywhere

Real curators leave a trail: a name, a website, socials, artists who mention them. Musosoup’s guide flags curators with no social profiles or website, and curators running many large playlists with generic titles. It also suggests checking who follows the curator: accounts with no pictures, odd or repeated names, or zero followers.

How to check: open the curator’s Spotify profile and their other playlists, then search their name and the playlist name online. Spotify itself recommends talking to artists who used a service and searching for reports of artificial streaming.

What red flags show on the playlist itself?

Save counts that don’t match stream counts, followers that don’t match listeners, and a track list with no theme. None of these proves botting alone: one odd number is a question, three together are an answer.

4. A big save count, but the songs on it have tiny stream counts

A playlist page shows how many people saved it, and Spotify shows each track’s all-time stream count publicly. If tens of thousands of people really listen, songs that have sat on the playlist a while should show it. Musosoup calls a playlist with over 50,000 followers hosting songs under 1,000 streams “a clear indication” of botting. That is one guide’s rule of thumb, not a Spotify threshold.

How to check: pick five songs from the middle and bottom of the playlist, ideally by small artists. Open each one’s release page, read its stream count, and compare with the playlist’s saves.

5. Few listeners, many followers, and growth that jumps in steps

A playlist page shows saves, not how many people listen or how it grew. Free checkers estimate both, and DistroKid’s help page points artists to artist.tools’ bot checker. artist.tools gives the example of a playlist with 47,142 followers but only 2,400 listeners as one that “is likely fake”, and says genuine growth “tends to be gradual and steady”. A chart that climbs in sharp steps, or suddenly drops, is the shape to worry about.

How to check: paste the playlist link into a checker and read followers against estimated listeners and the shape of the follower chart. Treat it as an estimate that tells you whether to dig further.

6. The playlist doesn’t hang together

A real playlist has a reason to exist: a mood, a genre, a scene. Musosoup flags playlists whose name doesn’t match the songs, and artist.tools flags ones that mix incompatible genres.

How to check: play 20 seconds of ten tracks in a row. If you can’t say who the playlist is for, neither can a listener. Before pitching anyone, the Is my song ready for Spotify? check helps you judge whether your song fits.

What red flags show in Spotify for Artists after you’re added?

A spike followed by a drop, streams from “Other”, and listeners in places you’ve never reached. These come from Spotify’s own list of abnormal activity, and they matter even if you paid nobody. Start with Music, then Playlists: Spotify for Artists lists the top 100 playlists your music is on, ordered by how many of your listeners each one brought, for the last 12 months.

7. A sudden spike in streams, followed by a drop

Spotify lists “a sudden spike in streams for no apparent reason, followed by a drop off” and “a sudden and short-lived increase in follower growth” as signs of artificial streaming.

How to check: look at the song’s daily streams around the date you were added, then see whether one playlist accounts for most of the spike.

8. Most streams come from “Other” or a source that doesn’t make sense

Spotify for Artists splits your streams by where they happened: your profile and catalog, listeners’ own playlists and libraries, their queue, editorial playlists, algorithmic playlists and mixes, and other listeners’ playlists. Spotify names “the majority of streams coming from unexplained or surprising sources of streams (such as ‘Other’ or another streaming source that doesn’t make sense)” as abnormal.

How to check: on the Audience, Song or Release page, go to Segmentation, then Source of streams. A playlist add should show up under other listeners’ playlists. If a large share lands somewhere you can’t explain, note the dates.

9. Listeners in places you’ve never reached

Spotify also lists “an unexplained spike in streams from a location where your tracks haven’t previously been active.” artist.tools also names VPN-heavy locations such as Ashburn, Virginia as worth investigating.

How to check: look at your top countries and cities. A city that has never appeared before, jumping into your top five the week of a new playlist add, makes that playlist suspect.

What should you do if a playlist looks botted?

Tell your distributor, report the playlist to Spotify, and get your song off it. In that order:

1. Tell your distributor or label. Spotify asks artists who see anything abnormal to inform them and share details of any services they hired. Your distributor can pass this on to Spotify.
2. Report the playlist. Spotify runs a playlist reporter in Spotify for Artists for suspicious playlists your music has been added to, and says it will investigate before taking action.
3. Ask the curator to remove you, stop paying the service, and keep a record of both.

Spotify acknowledges that some services bot artists’ music “against your will, or without your knowledge”, and says that is a small minority of the artificial streaming it sees. If music does get taken down, DistroKid says artists who aren’t using promotional services can re-upload with the same ISRC to get a new URI. Other distributors have their own process, and the guide for songs removed for artificial streaming compares them.

How much can a botted playlist cost you?

A per-track fee your distributor may pass on to you, and in the worst case the release itself. Since April 1, 2024, Spotify charges labels and distributors per track when flagrant artificial streaming is detected, and only at very high rates of artificial streaming per track. TuneCore’s guide puts the charge at €10 per track. What happens next depends on your distributor. CD Baby says a flagged release incurs a penalty charge that is passed on to the artist and deducted from the account balance, and that because it can’t remove one track from an album, a takedown removes the full release. LANDR says it commits that non-violating artists won’t be affected by these penalties.

To judge whole promotion services rather than single playlists, see Is Spotify promotion legit?. To see roughly what a number of streams is worth before paying anyone, try the monthly listeners to money calculator.

Keep reading: Spotify for Artists stats, explained · Is Spotify promotion legit? · All guides · Free artist tools