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Fans Are Spoofing Spotify With 'Fake Plays', And That's A Problem For Music Charts (buzzfeednews.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The Billboard charts have long been the gold standard by which musicians measure their success, but as recent tantrums by the likes of Nicki Minaj have highlighted, the rising influence of streaming services is upending that model -- and giving die-hard fans a way to manipulate the data. A recent release by the Korean pop group BTS prompted its superfandom, millions strong across the globe, to do just that by launching a sophisticated campaign to make sure the boy band reached No. 1.
The strategy employed by the so-called BTS Army went largely like this: Fans in the US created accounts on music streaming services to play BTS's music and distributed the account logins to fans in other countries via Twitter, email, or the instant messaging platform Slack. The recipients then streamed BTS's music continuously, often on multiple devices and sometimes with a virtual private network (VPN), which can fake, or "spoof," locations by rerouting a user's traffic through several different servers across the world. Some fans will even organize donation drives so other fans can pay for premium streaming accounts.
"Superfans of pop acts have long been doing this sort of thing," said Mark Mulligan, managing director of the digital media analysis company MIDIA Research. "But if a superfan has decided to listen nonstop to a track, is that fake? If so, how many times do they have to listen to a track continuously before it is deemed 'fake'?" One BTS fan group claimed it distributed more than 1,000 Spotify logins, all to make it appear as though more people in the US were streaming BTS's music and nudge their album Love Yourself: Tear up the Spotify chart, which in turn factors into Billboard's metrics.
The strategy employed by the so-called BTS Army went largely like this: Fans in the US created accounts on music streaming services to play BTS's music and distributed the account logins to fans in other countries via Twitter, email, or the instant messaging platform Slack. The recipients then streamed BTS's music continuously, often on multiple devices and sometimes with a virtual private network (VPN), which can fake, or "spoof," locations by rerouting a user's traffic through several different servers across the world. Some fans will even organize donation drives so other fans can pay for premium streaming accounts.
"Superfans of pop acts have long been doing this sort of thing," said Mark Mulligan, managing director of the digital media analysis company MIDIA Research. "But if a superfan has decided to listen nonstop to a track, is that fake? If so, how many times do they have to listen to a track continuously before it is deemed 'fake'?" One BTS fan group claimed it distributed more than 1,000 Spotify logins, all to make it appear as though more people in the US were streaming BTS's music and nudge their album Love Yourself: Tear up the Spotify chart, which in turn factors into Billboard's metrics.
Youxre missing the point. The charts are a marketing tool.
It is in their interest to get the highest sales for a product. As the majors compete against each other, they try to game the charts just like everyone else.
There are safegards in place to prevent and detect gaming.
The majors' strategies are more sophisticated than simply multiplay strategies (which are already mitigated).
I know for a fact they the multiplay process described here has little or no effect on the outcome of a streaming based chart and there are mechanisms already in place to prevent this.
Back in the day, labels/artists would pay DJs to play certain tapes or tracks over and over again even if they weren't all that good just to get them to the top. They still do in a way but nowadays the music labels simply own the radio stations so nobody gets paid.
There were ways to get around the labels and some artists also got very creative to spike the public's ears (eg Bohemian Rhapsody).
I'd say what old is new again, as long as people care about any single list to inform their taste this will happen.
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I simply cannot comprehend this 'superfandom' phenomenon. I can understand _really_ liking a band, even liking them so much that you encourage, repeatedly, all your friends to listen to them. You buy their merchandise, you go to their concerts, you follow the personal lives of the band members. All understandable, not the type of thing I would do, but I get it.
But paying money out of your own pocket for no personal gain other than your favorite band doing better in the charts? Why? Why not spend that money on more concert tickets, the money will still make it to the band? I just can't understand it