Spotify often needlessly shifts duties and responsibility onto the distributor and/or the artist
Spotify: A great platform, but that doesn’t mean staying silent about what doesn’t work.
Spotify is number one, no doubt about it. It has the most paying listeners, the most sophisticated tools for artists and features that other platforms don’t offer. And yet – or precisely because of that – it deserves open criticism where it falls short. Because whoever has the most power bears the most responsibility.
Let’s be fair: Spotify is a genuinely great platform. Spotify for Artists offers an overview of data that other platforms don’t come anywhere close to. Artist Profile Protection, Canvas, release planning tools, Marquee, Discovery Mode – these are all features with real value. Spotify is a powerhouse, and as a distributor we include it in our offering, no questions asked.
But Spotify is also the platform with the most paying subscribers of all streaming services – and yet it notoriously pays artists some of the lowest rates on the market. Below the threshold of 1,000 streams a year, it pays absolutely nothing (more in our article on this rule). Its royalty distribution system is a constant target of criticism from the music community, academics and independent artists around the world – and Spotify’s available reports, as well as analyses by independent sources, suggest that the platform keeps roughly a third of all revenue generated by streaming before anything makes its way to the artist.
With that kind of revenue, some aspects of Spotify’s behaviour towards artists are almost inexcusable. We write about Spotify’s problems in detail in a follow-up article – Spotify may be the biggest, but it has the most fundamental downsides. This article focuses on specific systemic problems in how Spotify handles responsibility, communication and the (lack of) protection of artists.
1. Spotify detects streaming fraud – but doesn’t warn artists in advance
Spotify runs sophisticated systems for detecting artificially inflated metrics. It knows when something is going on. It sees suspicious streaming patterns before anyone else does – neither the distributor nor the artist has access to this data.
And yet – Spotify doesn’t warn artists in time. You won’t get a message along the lines of: “We are registering suspicious activity on this track and recommend checking the source of your promotion. If it does not stop within 3 days, or if you do not remove the release from distribution by then, we will charge a fee for metric manipulation.” Nothing like that ever arrives. You only find out the outcome after the fact: Streams not counted, a fee deducted, or a release removed.
And yet Spotify demonstrably can send email notifications – for example, as part of the Artist Profile Protection feature, where the platform actively informs you about changes on your profile. So the technical capability exists. Why doesn’t the same principle work for detecting fraudulent streams? Talking about it being “impossible” looks more like an excuse. A more realistic explanation is inflexibility and a simple unwillingness to handle the protection of artists on its own platform better.
And because Spotify charges fees for detected artificial inflation of metrics (see the section below), it is hard not to notice that this state of affairs – where the problem is dealt with only after the fact rather than preventively – is financially advantageous for the platform. Suggesting it is deliberate would be a strong claim. But the fact that Spotify makes no effort to handle it better speaks for itself.
2. The fee for artificially inflated metrics: Spotify decides, the distributor explains
Spotify has introduced a system of financial penalties for proven artificial inflation of streams (we explain what artificial streaming is and why to avoid it here). The principle is simple: Spotify detects dubious activity, assesses it as exceeding the threshold for artificial streams, and charges a fee. The fee passes through the distributor to the artist. At Bez Labelu, it is borne in full by the artist whose tracks Spotify charged it for, and in Artists Bez Labelu you can see it separately – in your Revenue history and on the Spotify page in Analytics.
At first glance, a fair system. In practice, though, it has a fundamental problem: The distributor didn’t invent the fee, didn’t carry out the detection and didn’t make the decision. It is the last link in the chain through which the penalty reaches the artist. And it is the distributor who then has to explain to the artist why money is missing from their payout – even though it has no detailed information from Spotify and no way of influencing the decision.
On top of that – as we explain in detail in the article on the standard reporting delay – the whole payout and reporting system is delayed by several months. This means that even if the artist reacts immediately and stops the source of the problem, the fee may arrive with a considerable delay. And the suspicious activity will remain visible in the reports for some time after the problem was long resolved on your side.
How Spotify communicates this fee publicly also deserves attention – in a way that easily creates the impression that “your distributor is charging you a fee”, rather than that the fee arises and is defined on Spotify’s side. In this system, the distributor is not the author of the penalty. It is just the postman who delivers the penalty to your account.
3. Content moderation: Spotify decides, the distributor explains
Spotify sets the platform rules – what counts as prohibited content, unacceptable metadata, spam or misleading labelling. Spotify always has the final say. If content doesn’t comply, it can hide it, reject it or sanction the entire distribution source.
The practical first line of control, however, lies with distributors: Spotify expects them to monitor album artwork, titles, metadata, rights, duplicates and suspicious upload patterns. At Bez Labelu, errors are already caught by the automatic form checks and the Metadata check in the release detail; we then continuously review submitted releases, and if there is a problem, you receive an email or a Task. If something goes wrong, Spotify steps in but leaves communication with the artist to the distributor. And the distributor often knows no more about the reasons for the intervention than what Spotify tells it in general terms.
The result: Spotify holds the decision-making power, but shifts the costs of communication, explanations and the customer support workload onto distributors. At the same time – when it comes to fighting dubious promo services that guarantee streams, followers or playlist placements, Spotify tells artists to “be careful”, but gives them no specific tools or data that a smaller artist could use to realistically assess the risk.
4. AI music and spam catalogues: The platform profits, others clean up
In recent years, Spotify has been dealing with a massive influx of AI-generated music, white-noise tracks, pseudonymous ambient catalogues and spam re-releases. Spotify says publicly that it doesn’t ban AI music as such – it only fights spam, deception and manipulation.
Once again, however, the practical burden of control falls mainly on distributors: They are supposed to filter out mass uploads, duplicate catalogues and suspicious patterns. Spotify only steps in after the content is on the platform and a problem has arisen – and the intervention then hits the entire distribution source, not just specific tracks.
A well-documented example is the 2023 Boomy case: Spotify removed tens of thousands of AI-generated tracks uploaded via this platform after Universal Music Group flagged suspicious activity. So Spotify did intervene – but only once the catalogue had long been on the platform and the problem had made the news.
Compare this with the approach of Deezer, which was one of the first major platforms in the world to introduce automatic detection of AI music on upload and actively labels it in its catalogue. Deezer handles it proactively, preventively and transparently. Spotify reacts only when it can no longer be ignored.
5. Spotify URI: Spotify sends artists to their distributor over something it can solve itself
A Spotify URI is a unique identifier that Spotify assigns to every artist, album and track. You need it, for example, when signing up for a campaign, linking profiles or for technical integrations. We explain in detail how to get it and where to find it in our guide to Spotify URIs (and more).
The problem arises in situations where an artist needs the URI before their first release or to claim their profile at that point. In its help pages, Spotify automatically refers them to the distributor. But Spotify itself has access to its own system, can look up or assign the URI, and in many cases is technically able to handle it directly. And still the first instruction is: “Contact your distributor.”
You don’t need the URI in advance for the release itself via Bez Labelu: A new performer doesn’t fill it in at registration, and for other artists who don’t have a Spotify profile yet, you simply enter NEW in the form – the profile is created during distribution (see How to enter another artist who does not have profiles on the platforms yet). If you need the URI to get access to Spotify for Artists, you will find the steps in the article How to get access to Spotify for Artists before releasing your first album/single.
This is a typical example of a pattern that repeats itself across different areas at Spotify: Spotify has the data, Spotify has the system, Spotify can help – but the first response is a redirect to the distributor. For artists, this means unnecessary extra steps and slows down things that could be solved directly.
6. Spotify sends a verdict. But not the evidence.
When Spotify intervenes – removes content, deducts a fee, flags a release as problematic – neither the artist nor the distributor usually gets any explanation (let alone a detailed one). The reasons are generic: Suspicious activity, a breach of the rules, detection of artificially inflated metrics. No specific data, no list of the sources of the suspicious streams, no clear documentation of what exactly Spotify identified and on what basis.
And if distributors try to dispute Spotify’s decision – for example in cases where the artist is convinced they never paid for any manipulation and the problem arose without their knowledge – Spotify’s answer is consistently identical. Regardless of the context, regardless of the evidence provided.
“Regarding the fee applied to the referenced tracks, after further analysis of the streaming behaviour, we have concluded that the fees have been correctly applied and will not be credited or withdrawn. The streams on these tracks exceed our threshold of confirmed artificial activity. Our initial decision will remain.”
In plain words:
“We have analysed the streaming on these tracks again: The fees were charged correctly and will be neither refunded nor cancelled. The number of streams on these tracks exceeds our limit for confirmed artificial activity. Our original decision stands.”
This statement comes again and again, word for word, regardless of the specific circumstances of the case. Spotify sends it as its final answer – without any evidence, without specific data, without any report that would allow the artist or the distributor to understand what exactly was detected and why the decision was irreversible.
Spotify acts like a judge who delivers a verdict but won’t produce the case file. The distributor then looks like the one being evasive – even though it has no additional detailed information itself. Simply because Spotify hasn’t provided any.
7. Copyright infringement: Spotify for Artists could be the solution, but it isn’t
If someone uploads your music to Spotify without your consent, or uses your recordings in a way that infringes your copyright, Spotify has a form for reporting the infringement. The process, however, relies on the fact that you – as the rights holder – have to report and prove the infringement. By default, Spotify doesn’t act as an active watchdog.
That in itself would be understandable – nobody can manually check eighty million tracks. But the problem lies elsewhere: Spotify for Artists is a tool to which a verified artist has direct access. So Spotify knows who you are, knows which releases are yours, knows their UPC/EAN and ISRC codes and so on. Every “copyright claim” would of course still have to go primarily through the distributor, but Spotify for Artists could logically be the first place where an artist reports or resolves a problem directly – while informing the distributor at the same time.
If Spotify accepted and recorded these reports directly in Spotify for Artists, it would also have an excellent tool for building an artist trustworthiness profile – who deals with problems transparently, who has a clean record and who, on the contrary, repeatedly appears in a problematic context. Instead, Spotify keeps the system opaque and refers artists elsewhere. The same pattern applies here too: Spotify has the data, but leaves the responsibility and communication to others.
What does this all mean?
Spotify is a technology platform with enormous power. And that is exactly why these things need to be named out loud.
It detects, but doesn’t warn
Spotify is the first to have the data, but the artist only finds out about the problem from the penalty.
It fines, but doesn’t explain
The fee arrives without evidence, without details, with an identical template reply.
It decides, but shifts the burden
Spotify sets the rules. The distributor has to explain them – without sufficient information.
It profits from the catalogue, others clean up
It deals with AI spam reactively. Deezer handles it proactively and preventively.
A verdict without evidence
Spotify decides. It won’t provide the evidence that would make it possible to dispute the decision.
It has the system, but redirects you
URIs, copyright reports, profile claims – everything Spotify knows about, it redirects to the distributor.
Conclusion: The biggest platform, the biggest responsibility
Spotify is number one – and we say that without irony. But precisely because it is the biggest, different standards apply to it. A platform that keeps a third of the revenue from music has the means and the technological capacity to operate more transparently and more fairly towards the artists whose content keeps it going.
Naming these problems is not an anti-Spotify campaign. It is basic information for every artist who releases on Spotify – they should know what kind of system they are entering.
Read about the financial aspects and other downsides of Spotify in the follow-up article: Spotify may be the biggest, but it has the most fundamental downsides →