Hello everyone! Has anyone ever had issues streaming their own music from multiple platforms at the same time (such as on a couple different computers, using VPN)? Do they really red-flag you after a day of doing this? Even just boosting streams by less than 1,000 per day?

Curious about everyone's experience

 

Anitta, reggaeton and funk singer, had a lot of troubles bc of fake boostings on spotify. Why don't you give a time searching for playlist curators? it's a much easier and legit way to get streams(even more than 1000 per day), if that's your goal.

 

Do you have a list of playlist curators? Or a site with a list of actual ones, and not scams? I know nothing about this. I just don't want to pay those bot-service playlist things, as I know they're total scams and can get your stuff deleted right away.

Signed up with Symphonic a few months ago, hit the algorithm hard with an original release (hundreds of thousands of plays... very pleased to see that). They terminated my account out of nowhere due to "suspected fraudulent activity" but never specified what. No way to contest or appeal their decision. They claim to have "actual human support" but they ignored every message I sent, asking why and what happened. They simply took my release down, and deleted my account. I despise them, after this.

I recommend Soundcloud For Artists (even with the annoying monthly cost), CDbaby (despite their high per-release price-- wait til release prices are on sale), and DistroKid, in that order. Symphonic is trash.

Curious about everyone else's experiences, out there, re: distributors, and if they had any problems with them.

 

Spotify and Distrokid (one in the same) are as shady as they come. Soundcloud, not far behind that coupled with ridiculous take down/reinstate policies and CD Baby a waste of money.

 

Please tell me your personal experiences. I don't see how Spotify and Distrokid are one in the same, because Distrokid sends stuff to Spotify. Spotify is the platform, Distrokid one of the many distributors.

Soundcloud has never given me issues with ridiculous takedowns. Symphonic, yes.

CDbaby's expensive, but I've never had problems with them in the 17 years I've been signed up with them. Not one issue. Wait until they run their $4.99 release specials, make a bunch of "dummy" placeholder albums with fake tracks (you don't need to upload any audio, just have an album title and tracks), add the albums to the cart, pay the $4.99 x however many albums you make, and when it's all ready, put each album up with the proper audio and artwork. $5/release is not bad if you're not putting out 100 albums every 4 months like some crazy people out there.

 

That IS my personal experience, which you asked for. Spotify IS an owner of Distrokid and takes money from you twice on both ends. Calling them shady would be the understatement of the decade.

SC is nothing more than another leech devaluing music and not fairly sharing revenue with artists and labels. They will auto remove a song at their discretion without explanation and require all sorts of ridiculous and many times unobtainable proof to reinstate it. Mind you I am talking about uploads of official releases by the artist themself who owns the rights to do so. I can only imagine what they do with unofficial releases. Symphonic has way too many red flags to even consider it.

CDBaby is the same as these other jokers. Dime a dozen.

If you just want to place your music on streaming sites as fast as possible, you can easily do it yourself or there are many "distributers" available today that do these things for free. There are also plenty of reputable companies that do these things (and much much more for artists and labels, which is a distributers job BTW) for a cut of royalties on sales and streaming income with no fees, annual subscriptions or any of that.

And why anyone would want to play such games as you've described throughout this thread with their hard work, music and money is beyond me. If you "cheat" and get caught, you have no one to blame but yourself for the outcome. After 17 years of doing this, one would think you'd already know these things

 

Last edited by a moderator: Mar 6, 2023

Absolutely no need to be as rude as you're being.

If you can easily distribute the music yourself, or use something "free", please, list them. Give me a step-by-step.

It's funny how you post here talking about hard work and money, but as a lot of people know, this forum also features help with w@rez stuff, and I'm sure a lot of the members here haven't paid for the plugins they have used or still use. That's the elephant in the room.

I'm not saying to cheat, regarding distribution. I'm asking if one has tried boosting their steams, did they suffer any consequences? That's all. It's hard to find information about this sort of thing.

If all distributors rip everyone off, then why bother putting your music out there, at all?

 

For distribution of my smaller release, I use Awal, it's free, but they take a % of your royalties, but if you don't have more than 100 000 play every month, it's better than paying a yearly fee. For bigger release I use CDBaby, as they take your money only once for upload and don't ask to pay every year. Other agregator like Tunecore can be good, as they don't take a % on royalties, but you pay every year to keep you're release online (so that's only worth it if you have a lot of plays).

As for the fake plays, I wouldn't go in that direction if I were you, cause you can loose you're account and be ban from the plateform. If you do it yourself with a VPN or something like that, be aware that most VPN adress a quickly blacklisted as you're not the only one using it, so it can work for a time but because you don't know what other people using the same VPN do, you can be blocked even if you're doing just 10 plays a day. Spotify/Apple music are improving every day they way of dealing with this. Also they don't look just for IP adress, but also for unusual play pattern, as they can track from where each play come from, and it's really easy to spot something not organic, they got great algorythme for that too, not just for the play suggestion.

Major company are doing it sometime (not sure if that's a real strategy or just some personnal innitiative from some A&R in smaller sublabel), but because of their arrangement with Spotify/Apple, they're not banned when they get caught, but smaller independant artist/label don't have that power.

The best way for increasing your play is to use that time looking for curated playlist, as Riddim Machine says, or/and send your music to blog, or even youtube channel, not just the musical one, but also vloging youtuber who got music in their video as intro/outro/background (that will not increase your plays, but make your music heard by new people that could become regular listener). You can also try with TikTok, some influencer dancer can try to make a viral choregraphy (not for free of course), but it's not a 100% effective way.

It's a lot of work, but same as creating a really secure way to add fake plays. And also, don't buy from fake plays "factory", they're usually not that secure too and will get you're accound banned aswell (some are better than other, but it's probably a 1 out of 10 chance to find one that work without ban, and that would probably only work for a few month). Time and money are better spend with organic way, it can take more time but at the end, the follower and play you got in a organic way will last and make it worth the effort, as they will be there again when you got something new. Fake plays only last as long as you pay but don't make you're profil grow, it's just fake number that you'll have to start again and keep doing it all the time to make it look legit (and increasing the risk of ban), and also, as they're not real user, it doesn't make your music climb in the algorythm, so the only play you'll have with this will be fake (and it can even make you have less play, kind of the same way fake like on insta/facebook make your post reach less real people)