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Reacting to recent news about the Spotify top songs chart being botted to rig a Kalshi bet. Article that broke the story: https://www.wired.com/story/spotify-streaming-manipulation-prediction-markets-polymarket-kalshi/ Recommended Coffeezilla / voidzilla vids: https://youtu.be/Gq3v-Y6cvLI?si=FeVbYSzJ9umVvsT- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L-EH5dryuU =================================== Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theneedledrop Follow your melon: Twitter: https://twitter.com/theneedledrop Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/afantano Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/theneedledrop TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theneedletok editor : austen

Transcript

Hey everyone, Weirdthony Peeptano here, the internet's busiest music nerd with a wet shirt here – but I'm not holding a sexy hot wet t-shirt contest with only me as the contestant – I am instead talking about corruption in the music industry, specifically with regards to streaming. Which if you follow this channel on a regular basis, streaming has a lot of issues already in terms of artist pay, of course, but especially in terms of transparency.

Because not only are Spotify's internal numbers not widely verified by the outside world, so your average person could see whether or not they are wholly legitimate, but there's also lots of questions and confusion when it comes to topics such as botting and fake streams. A phenomenon that the industry acknowledges is a thing that fans understand is a thing.

And of course there's a lot of rhetoric and discussion across different platforms about what we're doing about it and how we are preventing it. Labels and Spotify itself are doing everything that they can to fight against it.

But despite these claims and a clear indication that this practice continues to go on, it's very rare that Spotify or any other platform comes out to announce what artists are and are not botting – and if they are caught, what kind of punishments they are being dealt as a result. That is until very recently when we actually did get another announcement of an artist who is being accused of having, I guess, quite a few botted streams.

That would be one Mr. Malcolm Todd, singer and songwriter, who actually has a brand new album out this year. I will say, as a sidebar, I gave a listen to the album myself. I wasn't crazy about it. It didn't really move me in any way whatsoever. But if you are really huge on sort of those lo-fi bedroom-spun fusions of pop and R&B and so on and so forth that the likes of Frank Ocean or, Steve Lacey have popularized, Malcolm most definitely has something for you.

So again, personally, not that huge on Malcolm as an artist, but he has been on a really interesting commercial run as of late with this new album doing pretty well for him. Other older tracks he's released over the years are streaming quite successfully. Of course, there was even conversation about an older track of his, "Earrings", actually doing some pretty big streams and climbing up the Spotify charts. And given that personally, I'm not really in on the Malcolm Todd hype, I just sort of saw those announcements and thought, 'OK, this guy's having his own hype moment right now is time in the sun.'

But over 4th of July weekend, multiple outlets reported that a lot of the traffic the song had been garnering as of late was, in fact, fake. In fact, Spotify has announced it removed about 500,000 streams from the song itself, which, damn, that's a fat chunk of streams. 500,000 down the toilet? You hate to see it.

And I kind of feel bad for Malcolm Todd because, believe it or not, Malcolm is not the one being accused of botting the streams. I know when these stories come up, it's usually alleged that it's the team of or the label of the artist who is doing this stuff behind the scenes – maybe the artists themselves – in order to boost their profile, boost their success, land themselves a nice fat spot on the Billboard charts.

But no, even though botting is being alleged, Malcolm is not being pointed out as the culprit. Per internal investigations that Spotify has not been fully upfront with yet, they are alleging that these botting streams are actually tied to prediction markets like Kalshi, which, for anybody who's not in the know, is a site where essentially you can gamble your own money to bet on the outcomes of various real-world events.

Coffeezilla: Here's the Kalshi CEO explaining the goal here, which is that eventually we can gamble on everything:

"The long-term vision is to financialize everything."

Coffeezilla: That guy just partnered with CNN and CNBC. Part of what I find so grating about this dialogue, the debate right now, is the insistence by these CEOs that they are not actually gambling. There is propaganda going on that they are something completely different, all because they found a regulatory loophole that allows them to be gambling in states where it's not allowed.

As a full funny side disclosure over here, I will say a handful of years ago – around the pandemic, – one platform such as this approached me to take a bunch of money to help them promote the idea of people going onto the platform and betting on the outcomes of my reviews, what the score would be. Of course, you never saw any such collaboration because I turned that down, as lucrative as that was, but I don't know why it didn't dawn on me at the time that there would be other, maybe more nefarious ways in which this business model would somehow impact the music industry.

Because truth be told, in article after article, deep dive after deep dive into these platforms, it is often found that a lot of people participating are doing so with insider knowledge or some hope that the edge they have – because of where they work or something they know behind the scenes – might help them win a bet because they just happen to have insight. Essentially cheating, but a lot of these platforms work in a gray area legally anyway.

So I think a lot of these individuals kind of presume that they might get away with what they're trying to get away with regardless.

"You know, I actually had a really interesting conversation with one of the folks who was nominated to be CFTC commissioner about this. And he asked me, 'Do you think we should allow insider trading in prediction markets?' And I said, it's actually a pretty it's not as clear cut question, right? - Brian Armstrong, Coinbase CEO

Apparently, now we not only need to watch out for artists and labels botting their own stuff in order to jockey for certain positions, but now we're currently looking at incentives for random people to bot the success of individual songs or particular records so they could then turn around and gamble on where a particular album or artist is going to place as far as like, top Spotify songs or in the billboard charts.

There are a few important delineations that I need to make here for the sake of this story. One, Spotify has confirmed these streams are in fact fake, but they themselves have not verified whether or not the streams have come by way of somebody who was hoping to benefit from a Kalshi bet.

This allegation comes more by way of Caleb Davies, someone who not only does a lot of in-depth commentary based on his knowledge of prediction markets but is a top Kalshi trader as well. Off of his educated guess, he himself made this connection to the way that this Malcolm Todd bet that he was observing on Kalshi was ballooning and changing, and observing the way in which this lined up with the sudden jump in streams of this particular Malcolm Todd track. Given all of that info and the money that could have been won, the chances of this being completely random seemed kind of low.

So while there is smoke here, I will say there isn't absolutely a confirmed fire per se. But still, when you go on a lot of these prediction market platforms, many of them do have music industry based bets. And given all the means right now on the internet that artists and labels and outsiders have to manipulate certain numbers or the perceived success of any given artist, especially when there is some cold, hard cash at stake, I don't think we as fans can be all that surprised that we are now seeing like a really new awful sort of impact and tie in with the music industry.

This is crazy and just kind of further proof that if you dump your money into these prediction market platforms, you are most likely going to be ripped off. If not by the platform itself, somebody else on there who has insider knowledge or at least the means and will to manipulate the outcome of the thing you just placed money on. So please be careful and don't be an idiot. And I'm going to leave it there.

Anthony Fantano. Prediction markets, for never.