Artificial streams are a form of streaming fraud. They're super bad and we work really hard with stores to prevent against them.
Artificial streams generally come from music pitching sites. They'll offer to boost your music to their fans via their playlist or website and in return you pay. If you see an offer like this, there's a good chance this will just result in your release being botted.
Sometimes releases just get botted and there's nothing you can do. But please don't intentionally go out of your way to do it.
If a store catches you, a few things happen:
Your release gets removed from the store
You won't get any of the revenue generated from that release for the artificial streams and;
You may not be able to deliver your music to that store in the future.
At SpareMusic, we work with stores to prevent against streaming fraud. If we spot that your music keeps getting botted and the percentage of organic vs artificial streams is high, your account will be terminated 😭 and your music removed from stores.
To reiterate, please don't bot!