These junk albums don’t appear to be specifically targeting popular artists, McDonald told Ars. Rather, generic music is uploaded under a wide range of one-word artist names. However, by using that tactic, some of these fake albums appeared on real artist pages, such as Gong, experimental rock band Swans, and English rock bands Asia and Yes. And that oversight is on Spotify, McDonald suggested.
“Given the scale of output and the randomness of the names, my guess is that the owners of this stuff might not even have intended it to end up on existing artist profiles,” McDonald told Ars. “If they just submitted stuff with artist names, not IDs, then it’s the streaming service’s problem to match those names to profiles, and thus the streaming service’s fault for not figuring out that these are not by the real Yes, Asia, Gong, Swans, etc.”
McDonald told Ars that “the labels should have been a pretty obvious clue in this case” that the album uploads weren’t genuine releases.
“If I still worked there, I would also have immediately scoured the input databases for more releases with the same patterns,” McDonald told Ars. “The stuff I found from those few labels might be only a tiny fraction of the crap.”
A spokesperson told Ars that Spotify is investigating the junk albums that McDonald flagged. It may take time for all albums to be removed from artists’ pages.
“We are aware of the issue, have relocated the content in question, and are considering our further options against the providing licensor,” Spotify’s spokesperson said. “When we identify or are alerted to attempts by bad actors to game the system, we take action that may include removing stream counts and withholding royalties. Spotify invests heavily in automated and manual reviews to prevent, detect, and mitigate the impact of bad actors attempting to collect unearned royalties.”