For artists with a distributor warning

Got an artificial streaming warning? Find the playlists behind it.

Your distributor says a track had artificial streams but won't say where they came from. Paste the playlists from your Spotify for Artists page. SpotCheck scores each one for bot-farm patterns and drafts your reply.

  1. 1

    In Spotify for Artists, open Music, choose the flagged track, then open Playlists.

  2. 2

    Open each playlist in Spotify and copy its link (Share, then Copy link to playlist).

  3. 3

    Paste them all below, one per line. Up to 50 at a time.

What an artificial streaming warning actually means

When your distributor flags artificial streaming, it is passing on a signal from Spotify: streams on one or more of your tracks came from accounts or patterns Spotify considers inauthentic, and the streams are being removed. Distributors pass these warnings on without detail, so you usually learn that a track was flagged but not which playlists sent the streams, whether they were bought by a promoter you paid, or how to respond without making things worse.

The most common source is a playlist you did not choose directly: a promotion service you paid for a campaign, or a third party who added your track to lists you never vetted. Bot-farm playlists tend to share traits that show up in public data: follower counts that jump in bursts, engagement that does not match the audience size, and networks of lists that behave the same way. Reading those signals is the point of the scan above.

What the scan gives you

Paste up to 50 playlist links from your Spotify for Artists page. SpotCheck scores each one for bot-farm patterns, flags the lists that look worst, and drafts a reply you can send to your distributor explaining what you found and what you are doing about it. You keep the evidence either way: even if the flagged playlists were not the source, knowing which of your placements carry bot risk tells you where not to spend again.

The scan is free to run, two scans a day on the free plan. Beyond it, SpotCheck is a browser extension that scores bot risk on any Spotify playlist before you pitch or pay: three checks a day free with an account, Pro (£4.99/mo) with the full breakdown and export, Premium (£14.99/mo) adding curator contacts and playlist watching. If you are choosing promotion services after a warning, the guide on what playlist promotion actually costs and the tool comparisons are the sensible next reads.