I spun the wheel…into a headache

Over the last couple of years my personal musical endeavors can be summed up as a beloved hobby. Live performances were gone and I was starting a new career in Marketing in the clean energy space. Mainly I performed in online concerts and released a couple of singles, winging it as I went. Seriously, cannot stress how little effort was put into understanding Spotify or submitting to playlists, etc.

There have been moments when I’ve dipped my toe into the fray, for instance, with the “Classical Crossover Discovery” Playlist. John Riesen from Crossover Records helped to run Facebook ads to promote it resulting in 150+ followers. Mainly however, my time has been concentrated on the magazine and non-musical pursuits. There was also that little issue of a nagging vocal disorder due to covid – but that’s a story for another time!

As we look forward to 2023, I’m resolving to make my own music a priority again. There are two tracks recorded during my vocal recovery phase that I’ve been holding onto and decided it’s time to bring into the light. Are the vocals perfect? Absolutely not, but they are sung from the heart and well, why not?!

I previously used DistroKid to release my albums/singles but ended up pulling albums due to their cover fee. DistroKid charges $12 to manage the mechanical licenses. According to the “Learn all things music and AI” 334 streams will make you $1 on Spotify so that means you’d need at least 4,000 streams to break even with the royalty costs. To be candid, my releases were no way close to that. Unfortunately, my membership with DistroKid renewed in November so I’m locked in for a year at least with those tracks but am starting to look at other options to release music in the new year.

In moseying around the DistroKid artist platform, I found an option to “Get Heard Now.” There was one seemingly easy way to get attention. According to DistroKid you can “spin the wheel to get on our Spotify playlist.” Why not? I tried it and got a number in the thousands. Every couple of days there’s be an e-mail saying the song was bumped and it was time to spin again.  Annoying but hey it’s free promotion so might as well. I’ve been down with covid this week anyways so wasn’t doing much else.

It was pleasantly surprising to see my monthly listeners had grown to 208 and today when checking the artist profile I found that “The Perfect Year” had reached 1,225 streams. Wow! I was about to excitedly share on my socials but something felt off. Checking the “Discovered on” playlists there were two new ones “Chill Night” and “WAVR.AI.” A quick google revealed that there were numerous artists reporting these playlists as bots. Greattt….

The situation is scary for independent artists, not only because your analytics will be inaccurate but because there is a real chance Spotify will pull the song down. In 2021, thousands of artists had their music removed for “fraudulent streams.”

Some artists have unwittingly been taken into these illegal “pay to play” schemes which goes against the Spotify terms of service. It could be a well meaning fan that submitted your song or??! There is potentially a connection between being featured on large playlists such as the Distrokid “Wheel of Playlist” and bot accounts targeting your songs. See this Redd-it thread.

So what’s to be done? Report this to Spotify and your distributor to be space. Spotify responded with a, “Don’t worry – our team will look into this… it’s up to the playlist owner’s discretion which songs remain and which songs they remove from the playlists.” Other users used the community help section to leave a message about similar playlists.

DistroKid support chat was impossible. The bot did not understand me and kept redirecting so I’ve tried to tweet them directly and see what response that gets.

Hey @DistroKid my music seems to have been added to bot playlists. Your chat will not allow me to report this to a human, can you please help out?

— Natasha Barbieri (@asingingwife) December 28, 2022

I was one foot out the door from DistroKid already and fortunately (?) did not have a lot of plays anyways so if Spotify does pull the track it would be frustrating but not the worst thing. Still the question remains, why are artists penalized instead of the bot accounts/playlists? Why aren’t they being deleted/pulled? This seems incredibly unfair and another way the streaming system is letting independent artists down.

It’s disheartening that this is the first thing that happens as I try to get more serious about releasing music but there’s no where to go from here but up right?

If you have gone through a similar experience and have any pearls of wisdom, please comment below. Also stay tuned for my reviews on SoundDrop and other alternative distributors coming soon!

Stay safe out there Indie Artists!

Natasha Barbieri, Editor

Editor

Creator of Classical Crossover Magazine. For Natasha music has always been closely tied to her faith. At age 18, Natasha made her opera debut playing the part of the mother in Menotti’s ‘Amahl and the Night Visitors’ with the Eastern Festival Opera. At 20, she was a winner of the 2011 Young Artist Competition at Andrews University. Natasha graduated in 2012 with a Bachelor’s of Music. Natasha has released a series of Holiday singles “A Place Called Home” (2020), “One Little Boy,” and “The Perfect Year” (2021). In 2021, she was nominated for the ‘Future Classic Women Awards’ show on Men’s & Women’s Radio Station. Natasha is the creator and editor of ‘Classical Crossover Magazine’ a venture that has allowed her to interview many of the top stars in the genre including Sarah Brightman, Celtic Woman, Mirusia, Paul Potts, and more. During the covid-19 pandemic, she created an online concert series for the magazine that has seen her perform in the same line-up as Alex Sharpe, Lucy Kay, Barbara Padilla, Classical Reflection, and more on the virtual stage. In 2022, Natasha was included on the charity album “Stars of Classical Crossover: Christmas” in benefit of the Wallace & Gromit Children’s Charity.