Streaming Platforms, Ticket Vendors, and Agencies Scrutinized Over Manipulated Music Metrics

British producer James Blake wrote on Instagram that album reviews, comment sections, and streaming numbers are increasingly manipulated for profit. "If you're an artist, remember that in 2026 there's not a single part of the system that isn't faked," he wrote.

In April, Ticketmaster announced it identified and canceled thousands of tickets purchased by scalpers who used fake identities to create multiple accounts and bypass ticket limits for Harry Styles' 30-night residency at Madison Square Garden. Saumil Mehta, global president of Ticketmaster, said the tickets would be sold back to fans at face value.

Spotify deleted more than half a million streams from Malcolm Todd's "Earrings" after determining the song's numbers had been manipulated by bots. The song spiked in listenership by 70% in June, landing it at the top of the Spotify USA charts. A Spotify statement said the company does not pay out royalties associated with manipulated streams.

In June, Deezer reported that AI-generated songs made up more than 50% of its daily uploads. Those songs accounted for less than 3% of total streams on the platform, and a majority of those streams were deemed fraudulent. A Luminate report found listeners are becoming less comfortable with generative AI content.

During a live podcasting taping at SXSW in March, the co-founders of Chaotic Good Projects told Billboard they create fake fan accounts to post, comment, and share videos of artists on their roster. The controversy grew after WIRED published a story about the band Geese titled "The Fanfare Around the Band Geese is a Psyop." Geese frontman Cameron Winter told Rolling Stone the label explained Chaotic Good was hired to repost clips and push the band onto algorithms, not to create fake fan accounts. "We were just like, 'Oh, my God. The whole f***ing thing is fake.' We were having a meltdown," Winter said. Geese has played festivals and sold out its biggest headlining tour for all of 2026.

The Rolling Stones released the single "In the Stars" this summer ahead of the group's 25th studio album, Foreign Tongues. In the music video, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Ronnie Wood appear as younger versions of themselves. The deepfake versions were created by Deep Voodoo, an AI startup formed by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

Ticketmaster's April announcement followed years of debate about how the company prices concert tickets and coincided with the end of an antitrust trial involving Ticketmaster, its parent company Live Nation, and dozens of states that accused the conglomerate of overcharging fans. Producer Jack Antonoff responded to Ticketmaster's statement about catching scalpers on X with sarcasm: "you caught you?"