Many companies offer what they claim to be an algorithmic stream boost, having thousands of Spotify Radio streams come through on an artist's profile, showing up as an algorithmic source of streams. This easily fools artists and managers because most people would think, If it’s coming from/labeled as ‘algorithmic’ how could it be botted?

But, companies are able to bot algorithmic streams by opening the “Song Radio” for an artist's song and ordering bots to the link of the artist's Song Radio playlist, where the artist is the #1 song spot. This conceals bot streams to show up as algorithmic streams, but if you were to look at the conversion (playlist adds, saves) you will see it is irregular and inorganic, and risking a song-takedown.

In reality, real algorithmic streams come as a result of overall fanbase growth such as - real listeners saving the song from organic playlists, listeners clicking the song link from social media and playing it, sending the links to each other, and more. But even with these efforts, algorithmic stream growth is NOT something that can be turned on like a switch. (Unless using Spotify’s own Discovery Mode on Artists' app, which is not always effective).

Take a look at how much of the playlist has popular artists’ songs on it. If the playlist has no artists known artists on it, then what reason do listeners have to listen to it?

Most of the time, if a playlist selling placements has more than 20% unknown artists on it, that is a red flag.

When looking at a playlist, think about the average listeners' experience and expectations. The playlist wouldn't have gotten popular if it was filled with artists that listeners aren't familiar with, as that gives them not much reason to listen. Unless the playlist was specifically themed/named "unknown artists" or something of that sort.

90% of organic playlists grow because they are one of the top results for a word or lyric that listeners search daily. If a playlist is just named "Top Fire" and has 60k likes, this is another red flag as there isn't a source of growth. The 10% of organic playlists that gain a following from a source other than search result, are playlists that have a TikTok/Reel created about that playlist, causing listeners to go from TikTok to Spotify, saving the playlist.

Although free trials can exist in many industries, it's very rare for organic playlist companies to offer free trials, as even 1-2 days placement on a playlist has a cost. A lot of companies offer a free trial in an effort to build artists' trust. In reality, they may buy 50 cents worth of bots sent to the artist, resulting in 2k+ fake streams that can severely hurt the artists' algorithm and risk the song being taken down.

If you are an artist who unfortunately has gotten botted knowingly or not, you'll notice that there are virtually no playlist adds showing on Spotify for Artists in relation to the streams. 1,000 organic streams usually result in 40+ user playlist adds showing in analytics. On bot streams, you will see 1,000 streams and 0-1 playlist adds.

If you get added to a playlist or work with a company and receive a spike in streams, you should immediately check the amount of your top listener city's listeners. From there, see what percentage of your total monthly listeners that top city is. If it's anything above 5%, that's an immediate red flag. We have a graphic explaining this in our "Blog" section, but essentially, in organic monthly listener analytics, the top city listener amount is usually only 1-3% of total monthly listeners. Real listeners are spread throughout the world. Unless you are from that city and have a big fanbase there, organic top city monthly listeners should rarely ever exceed 5%.