Given it's the world's largest streaming service, Spotify is the first port of call for fraudsters trying many different tricks – in the past we've seen fake streams (e.g. bot farms), fake albums (compiling a famous artist's offcuts without permission) and other brazen schemes (sometimes targeting new/young artists directly, too – ever got one of those dodge emails about playlist submissions?). The latest attempt is to exploit Spotify's 'track linking' feature which merges tracks on its system if they are the same recording released in different ways, for example through more than one distributor. It seems some fraudsters have discovered that they can find songs from independent artists that are performing well and upload a copy so that, after track linking merges the two versions, some of that streaming revenue might be diverted into their pockets. Filing a copyright infringement claim appears to be one way to foil these attempts. In a statement, Spotify has said they are "continuously evolving our efforts to limit the impact of such individuals on our service." Stay vigilant, folks! Via Billboard
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