Spotify Fraud - Fake Features

I was added as a featured artist without my permission or involvement. It brought to my attention how easy it is it be an artist imposter and scam people on Spotify.

People are literally gaming Spotify by faking collabs with famous (and not so famous) artists. Some scammers take it a step further and actually impersonate other artists.

Anyone can add false metadata when the release song, and some music distributors don't have safeguards in place to verify the identity of the real artists.

Although my fake artist feature turned out to be harmless, I'm now aware that this can happen to anyone.

If music distributors and Spotify actually care about artists they need to step up their game to prevent all this fraud. Otherwise we might as well go exclusive on Bandcamp or go back to selling CDs.

0:00 intro / my story
0:51 Spotify fake features: how it can happen
3:00 conclusion
Sources/further reading:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/29/18531476/music-industry-song-royalties-metadata-credit-problems

https://onezero.medium.com/scammers-are-gaming-spotify-by-faking-collaborations-with-famous-artists-42d127e370dc

https://slate.com/technology/2021/05/spotify-same-name-artists-impostors.html

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