Establishing strong vanity metrics on Spotify is really not that difficult, especially if you don’t care how you do it. 

Fake followers, massive bot-driven playlist ads, and even legitimate streams from countries that don’t serve your long-term growth as an artist can make your artist profile look quite impressive to the untrained eye. 

But if you’re like me, and you want to share your music with real people who truly enjoy the work you put out into the world, you’re going to want to do your best to avoid those pitfalls. 

Here are the three biggest red flags I look for: 

1. Which countries are listening? 

I am always watching where my traffic is coming from on Spotify, especially as a result of my ads. 

These days, I am primarily advertising in countries like the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, but regardless of where my ads are being shown, whether in a select few countries or on a global scale, I am looking at the relationship between those countries on Meta’s ad platform and on Spotify for Artists. 

To that end, one of the biggest red flags a look for is whether or not those countries match up to any degree.

 For example, if a country is getting a lot of traffic on Meta but minimal action on Spotify, this is a clear indication to me that something is off and I need to make a change. 

2. Top cities are important too. 

Beyond the countries where I’m seeing love on Spotify, I am also paying strict attention to the cities where my music is being consumed as well. The primary red flags I am looking for here are cities I know have big data centers in them. 

Wait, what? 

That’s right. Many cities worldwide, and specifically within the United States, house massive Amazon (and other) data centers. These data centers are often used to set up bot farms to generate fake playlist plays, fake followers, and fake streams for artists. 

3. And lastly, bad playlists. 

As most of you likely know, I’m not a big fan of playlisting to promote my music on Spotify, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still get added to them from time to time. 

When a song begins to get traction on Spotify, achieving a popularity score in the 30s or 40s, it is often the case that it will begin to appear on more popular playlists as a result, regardless of whether or not the song has been pitched to that service. 

Whenever I see a song has been added to a playlist with a significant following, I immediately want to do my due diligence on it to make sure it’s legit. 

It’s easy to grow on Spotify by faking the numbers, and with a small amount of money and a little bit of know-how, anyone can do it. 

But I want my growth to be legitimate, and I want real people enjoying my music, even if it’s only a fraction of what the vanity numbers potentially could be. 

Watch the original video on my YouTube channel. 

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