Smalts Ban(ne)d on Spotify

We need to share something concerning that recently happened with our music on Spotify. On January 31st, our song ‘To and the Measure’ had around 22,000 streams gained in January on Spotify. The next day, February 1st, those numbers suddenly dropped to 2,500 – without any warning or explanation. What’s even more confusing is that Spotify’s own artist dashboard and their monthly report both show much higher numbers (38,626 and 19,703 streams for ‘To and the Measure’ and ‘Admonition’).

Streams on the run

When we contacted Spotify support about this huge discrepancy, they made us wait 28 minutes only to claim these were “artificial streams” without providing any evidence. The strange thing is, our streams are coming from legitimate Spotify playlists like Indie Me, Rock Legends, Rock Anthems, and others that Spotify themselves verify. They refused to explain which streams were supposedly artificial or why they were removed.

The charts in this articel show the status on 6-2-25. The ForArtists backend reports 95.525 streams The front (what the listners see) reports only show 17.076. This is a staggering difference of 78.449 streams. Spotify removes them on the front, but still shows us the original countings in the back. There’s a concerning pattern regarding how Spotify treats streams from free accounts. It appears Spotify is specifically targeting and removing streams that come from free (ad-supported) accounts, labeling them as “artificial” without justification.

We will update this graph on a weekly basis. The green area  is the amount of streams that are not shown to the listners in the frontend and the App. These 78.449 streams are plundered from us and the pillage continues. On 8-2-25 we lost in 4 days approximately 10k streams again.

This raises serious questions.

• If Spotify considers free streams “artificial,” what does this say about their own ad-supported business model?
• Are they suggesting their own free-tier users are less legitimate than premium subscribers?
• Why are they running ads to attract listeners if they later discount those same listeners’ streams?

There is a big concern about the financial cycle this creates. Artists pay to run ads promoting their music. There is almost no other way get on a playlist.

• These ads and playlists reach also free-tier users
• Spotify then detects free-tier users and removes many of their streams as “artificial”
• Spotify profits from both the ad revenue for free-tier users AND reduces royalty payments

Research suggests this could be a deliberate strategy where Spotify

• Makes money from artists buying ads
• Makes money from free users viewing ads
• Saves money by cutting royalties by labeling free streams as artificial
• Refuses to provide transparency about this process

This is particularly troubling because free users make up a huge portion of Spotify’s user base, and dismissing their streams as “fake” not only hurts artists financially but also devalues millions of legitimate listeners.

For the first time in 19 years  Spotify made a 1.4 billion profit in 2024, after applying these changes. But this isn’t just about numbers – it’s about transparency and fair treatment of artists. We’re sharing this because we believe our fans deserve to know what’s happening behind the scenes, and because we’ve discovered many other independent artists are experiencing the same issue.

We will publish here the daily real numbers and differences and keep you posted on the latest developments.

Despite this setback, we’ll keep making music and looking for more direct ways to connect with our amazing fans. Thank you for your continued support! Thank you for 100.000 streams in 2 months!