Advice
Aug 14, 2025
Buying Spotify streams will get you banned! Photo by:
Spotify dominates the modern music landscape. For many artists, it feels like the platform that can make or break a career. But in the pursuit of streams and clout, too many musicians are falling for one of the most damaging scams out there: buying Spotify streams on Fiverr.
On the surface, it looks tempting—“15,000 plays for $5!” “Guaranteed 20k streams!”—but here’s the truth: buying streams will kill your momentum, wreck your credibility, and possibly get you banned. Let’s break it down.
Fiverr is a freelancer marketplace where you can buy just about anything, including “Spotify promotion.” These gigs often make wild promises:
“15k guaranteed plays on playlists for $50!”
“Viral promotion to 100k followers!”
“Organic Spotify promotion, real engagement!”
Sounds amazing, right? Wrong. Any promotion that guarantees a set number of plays is fake. What you’re actually buying is bot traffic or cheap “click farms” overseas where people get paid pennies to run your track in the background.
Your numbers may go up, but no one is actually listening, saving, or following. No real fans. No real engagement. Just vanity metrics.
Spotify’s success engine is its algorithmic playlists—Discover Weekly, Release Radar, Daily Mix. These are where artists can get exposed to thousands of potential fans who actually want their music.
But Spotify’s algorithm doesn’t just look at play counts. It tracks skip rates, saves, playlist adds, and follows. When you buy plays, the bots don’t engage, so your track ends up with lopsided stats. To Spotify’s system, that looks like your music is trash—even if it’s not.
The result? Your music never reaches real listeners. You’ve essentially told Spotify: “Don’t recommend me.”
Some artists buy streams to look bigger than they are—padding their numbers to impress venues, labels, or fans. The problem? People can smell fake streams a mile away.
Imagine: you’re bragging about 100k plays, but only three people show up to your gig. No merch sales, no social media buzz, no fan engagement. Those big shiny numbers? Meaningless. Instead of building credibility, you’ve built doubt.
Spotify is crystal clear in their Terms of Service: artificially boosting streams with bots, scripts, or compensation is strictly forbidden. If you’re caught, they can pull down your music or even ban your account outright.
The risk is huge. The reward? Zero.
Buying fake streams isn’t just a waste of money—it’s career sabotage. If you want real fans and a real career, you have to earn attention the hard way:
Create music that connects.
Share it consistently.
Engage with your fans on socials.
Use commission-free platforms (like OohYeah) where your fans can support you directly.
Treat your music like an experience, not just a product.
Spotify numbers mean nothing without genuine interaction behind them. Real fans add songs to their playlists, show up at gigs, and buy merch. That’s what puts butts in seats—and money in your pocket.
Paying for Fiverr streams is one of the worst investments you can make as an artist. It’s dishonest, it kills your algorithm, it destroys credibility, and it violates the rules.
Want to succeed? Skip the shortcuts. Build a real fanbase. Because bots don’t buy tickets, bots don’t tip, and bots don’t care about your music.