u/gj_uk

Does anyone else have issues with ‘Song DNA’ attributing their content to the wrong person?

My artist name is one thing, and all is fine there, but in some of my production or performance credits I use my birth name (publishing always has to be your real name).

The problem is…my given name is incredibly common. I don’t even have a middle name. Spotify takes this information from my distributor, Amuse, and attributes every one of my tracks to someone with the same name as me. There doesn’t appear to be a single thing I can do about it…Spotify says they get their information from Amuse so to follow up with them, but I only enter my name into a text-field when submitting new tracks…there is no hyperlinking to Spotify artists. Since I span may different genres I’ve produced tracks under more than 20 aliases over the past three decades and never use my real name as an artist, only for publishing, principally because my name is so common…and is invariably already taken.

The only other solution offered by Spotify is to hide this erroneous information, but to be able to I must have 5,000 monthly listeners. Artists with a small profile already have odds stacked against them without sending what little audience they might have away to other incorrect artists which could eventually lead to confusion and lost followers.

PLEASE FIX THIS.

TLDR: Spotify SongDNA leads listeners to someone else with my birth name.

I’ve suspected for some time that Spotify’s data isn’t 100% reliable…and today I got a kind of confirmation. There always seems to be a discrepancy between ‘All-time streams’ and ‘12 months’ even when a track has been out less than a year, so that’s already suspicious. However….

Yesterday, one of my older tracks (which doesn’t stream much currently) came up randomly while I was driving. It was actually nice to hear it again and somebody I was with was surprised to learn it was one of mine, and a little later on, in front of me opened their Spotify, searched for it and played it through again but on their account.

Today, Spotify claims that track received ZERO plays yesterday. All my other tracks updated and reflect plays.

I’ve never actively promoted my material as I am just adding tracks over time and watching a slow increase in followers and listeners, so some of my tracks receive little support - especially a while after release, but it’s still rare to get an absolute zero…But, when I KNOW it physically had at least a couple of plays from two separate unconnected accounts it seems as though Spotify is just ignoring legitimate plays.

Imagine if they’re always just deleting a few plays from every single track…who’s to know…they could be getting away with withholding million$.

Back in the day you could audit a record company, and if you did more often than not you’d find some very creative accounting.

Is it just me or is Spotify data being delivered late more frequently recently? That is presuming everyone’s is delayed today along with mine…

Usually when all is well I can expect to have yesterday’s data by noon Pacific if not a couple of hours before.

I’m getting incredibly frustrated by how little data Spotify actually shares with artists.

It’s bad enough that location data is ONLY available for the past 28 days, but it’s also restricted to the top 50 cities. I’m showing a further 28 countries that my most recent track has performed in and no data is offered at all other than total streams per country. BUT, these account for more than half of this track’s streaming data.

I used to sell physical records all over the world and a huge amount of sales information was available through suppliers and distributors. I know some people only want to know where they’re most popular for planning tours etc, but I’m more interested in where there’s potential for growth…plus I’ve always got a kick out of knowing my tracks are being heard all over the planet.

Even getting an API key isn’t going to provide any more data in this regard.

Does anyone have any suggestions or solutions for getting more granular info?

80% of my catalogue is showing zero plays in the past recorded 24 hours. I’ve never had zero plays on any tracks, and have been witness to more than one person playing more than one of these tracks on Spotify during the past couple of days.

Anyone else experiencing this?