Spotify denies creating 'fake artists' for its playlists

Music industry publication listed 50 artists it claimed were not real, but were featured on playlists by the streaming service

In May, the Stockholm-based company agreed to pay more than $43m to settle a proposed class action (Reuters)

Spotify has denied that some of its playlists include music by "fake artists" after a report by an industry publication.

50 artists have racked up millions of streams after appearing on playlists such as "Sleep" and "Ambient Chill", but many of them do not appear to have visible profiles elsewhere online.

For instance Relejar, which has 13.4 million streams on Spotify, does not appear anywhere else in internet search results other than on the streaming service.

The 2 Inversions, who have 10.3 million streams, were featured on "Ambient Chill" alongside established artists such as Max Richter but also did not appear to have an online profile.

(Screenshot (Screenshot)

The original story was published by Music Business Worldwide in 2016, but has escalated after Spotify issued a complete denial of the accusations.

"We do not and have never created 'fake' artists and put them on Spotify playlists. Categorically untrue, full stop," a spokesperson said.

"We pay royalties - sound and publishing - for all tracks on Spotify, and for everything we playlist. We do not own rights, we're not a label, all our music is licensed from rights-holders and we pay them - we don't pay ourselves."

Mark Mulligan, from Midia research, told the BBC that Spotify could be commissioning others to produce content which it then pays lower royalties for in return.

He said it was also possible that the company was buying existing production music from other companies.

"We still don't have the smoking gun - there's no proof of payment," he said. "This is getting creative about how Spotify might try to not have to pay out for all the music it plays.

"10 years into the Spotify experiment, it still hasn't made a profit despite being the most successful music-streaming platform on the planet."