CD Baby artificial streaming fee: what it means and what to do

CD Baby shows the penalty as its own line in your report, which is often how artists first find out. It also explains two things other distributors do not: why the whole release comes down, and how Apple Music penalties differ.

What Spotify does about artificial streams

Spotify does not pay royalties on streams it judges artificial and removes them from public counts and charts. It reports confirmed cases to your distributor every month, and since April 2024 it charges distributors per track when artificial streaming on that track is very high. Most distributors pass that charge on to the artist.

• Spotify defines an artificial stream as one that does not reflect a real person choosing to listen.
• Streams Spotify judges artificial earn no royalties, are taken out of public stream counts and charts, and do not help recommendations.
• Depending on how severe it is, Spotify may also remove the song from Spotify playlists, or remove the track from Spotify altogether.
• Spotify sends labels and distributors a monthly report of confirmed artificial streaming. The distributor decides what happens next: a warning, a penalty fee, a takedown or, in flagrant or repeated cases, closing the account.
• Since 1 April 2024 Spotify charges labels and distributors per track when flagrant artificial streaming is detected. Spotify says the charge only applies to very high rates of artificial streaming per track. Spotify does not publish the amount.
• Distributors that publish the figure put it at about €10 per affected track per month (around $10 to $11), and say they pass it on to the artist's account. Trade press reported in 2023 that the trigger is more than 90% of a track's streams being artificial; Spotify has not confirmed that number.
• Spotify forbids paying any service that promises streams, followers or playlist placement in exchange for money, and says using one can get your music removed.
• If your streams were genuine, Spotify says to share how you promoted the release with your distributor or label, who can raise it with Spotify's team for review.
• You can report a suspicious playlist your music was added to straight to Spotify, and Spotify asks artists to discourage fans from looping tracks on repeat.
• Some artificial streams are removed before they reach Spotify for Artists, so your distributor's report can show a problem your dashboard does not.

What CD Baby says happens

• CD Baby emails you when Spotify or another partner flags a release.
• Penalties are posted to your CD Baby account and deducted from your balance, under section 4(c) of the Artist Agreement.
• Flags and penalties can lead to the release being taken down from some or all streaming services. CD Baby cannot remove a single track, so the whole release (UPC) comes down.

Penalties: official and reported

Official vs reported. Spotify confirms it charges distributors per track for flagrant artificial streaming, live since 1 April 2024, but it does not publish the amount or the trigger. The figure of about €10 per track per month comes from distributors' own help pages and is not confirmed by Spotify. The "more than 90% of streams" trigger comes from 2023 trade press and Ditto's help page; Spotify only says "very high rates".

How to respond to CD Baby

1. CD Baby says it cannot appeal the platform's decision on your behalf.
2. Contact CD Baby support with the facts of your promotion if you believe the flag is wrong, and share the same facts with Spotify through your distributor as Spotify advises.
3. Use the reply email in the tool above: fill in the track, ISRC, notice date and what promotion ran, then copy it.

CD Baby contact: https://support.cdbaby.com/hc/en-us.

Evidence to gather before you reply

Put everything in one folder before you write back. A calm reply with dates and receipts gets further than an angry one.

• The notice itself: save the full email or dashboard message, with its date, and note any reference or ticket number.
• The affected tracks: title, ISRC and release UPC for each, from your distributor dashboard.
• Every paid promotion for these tracks: company or person, what they promised, what you paid, and invoices or receipts.
• Campaign names and dates: when each promotion started and ended, so they can be matched against the spike.
• Playlist pitching: the names and links of playlists and the curators you contacted, and how (platform, email, DM), with screenshots of the replies.
• Ads you ran: screenshots of each ad, its dates, budget, target countries and results, from Meta, TikTok, Google or Spotify Marquee or Showcase.
• Spotify for Artists screenshots for the period: streams, listeners, saves, top countries and cities, source of streams, and top playlists.
• Your distributor's sales report lines for the same months, including any fee or negative line.
• Anything you did to stop it: messages asking curators to remove the track, cancelled orders, playlist reports sent to Spotify, and their dates.
• Genuine reasons for growth: press, radio, a viral post, a show, a sync, a fan community, with links and dates.
• Any posts where you asked fans to stream, so you can show you did not ask for looping.
• Keep everything in one folder, with dates in the file names, before you reply.

What we could not confirm

• Both CD Baby help pages returned 403; quotes come from search snippets.
• The Apple Music percentage is not stated in the snippet we saw.