Kalshi Trader Accuses Others of Manipulating Spotify Charts With Fake Streams: Report

Traders on Kalshi are accused by a vocal user of manipulating Spotify’s charts in order to win big on the betting platform’s music predictions.

The alteration of Spotify’s charts by having bots stream a song turned out to be true, according to a report by WIRED, but whether the streaming bots were deployed by unscrupulous Kalshi traders set on rigging the most-played list wasn’t confirmed and remains only an accusation. Kalshi said they were investigating the matter.

Get Malcolm Todd Tickets Here

WIRED’s story shared the experience of prediction market extraordinaire Caleb Davies, who has earned an estimated $1.2 million on these betting platforms, after he looked into how pop rocker Malcom Todd’s “Earrings” jumped to Spotify’s No. 1 song on its global top 50 chart. Davies said that by his calculations there was 1 in 77 octillion chance of “Earrings” randomly hitting the highest spot, leading him to believe other traders used bots to increase the song’s streams.

After Davies presented his complaint to Spotify, the streaming service investigated the suspected fraudulent plays and confirmed to WIRED that evidence of artificial streaming was found. Spotify took away more than 500,000 streams from “Earrings.” Nothing suggests Todd had anything to do with the fake streams.

As of Thursday night, “Earrings,” a song from Todd’s 2024 debut mixtape Sweet Boy, was in the No. 10 spot.

Manipulating the number of streaming plays is a known issue that streaming services monitor, and it may be happening with some of the biggest artists. Two lawsuits accuse Drake of using bots to increase his streaming plays, with one saying a “substantial” amount of his nearly 40 billion streams are fraudulent, accusation the rapper as denied.

Consequence has also explored how charts for Billboard and iTunes, now Apple Music, can be rigged.