Spotify Playlist Bot Checkers Are Useless: Here’s Why

In the competitive world of music promotion, getting your tracks on popular Spotify playlists can significantly boost your career. However, the ecosystem is plagued with fraudulent playlists using bots to artificially inflate follower counts and stream numbers.

To combat this, several platforms offer "bot checker" tools that claim to identify fake playlists - but these tools fall dangerously short of providing accurate results.

Most publicly available playlist bot checkers like those on SubmitHub, IsItAGoodPlaylist, and Artist.Tools use a single methodology: analyzing follower graphs for suspicious spikes. While this approach seems logical, it's fundamentally flawed and incomplete.

Legitimate playlist curators can become victims of bad actors. I've personally witnessed playlists that were grown organically through Facebook ads or Spotify SEO suddenly targeted with fake follower attacks. While Spotify typically bans these malicious accounts quickly, the damage to the follower graph is done.

Artists can particularly relate to this issue. Many have experienced the frustration of being randomly added to botted playlists they never requested, only to have their distributor potentially flag their Spotify account for suspicious activity. Just as artists face these unwarranted penalties, legitimate playlist curators can be unfairly labeled as fraudulent due to actions entirely outside their control.

A sudden spike and fall in followers doesn't necessarily indicate the playlist owner is using bots - it could mean they've been targeted by competitors. Standard bot checkers flag these playlists as "botted" regardless, punishing innocent curators.

The most reliable indicator of bot usage isn't visible in public tools at all - geographical listener data only available through Spotify for Artists. This reveals a critical insight that bot checkers miss:

Bots operate through VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) that can only spoof locations available in VPN networks. While these include major cities, they also extend to smaller cities like Ashburn, VA and Buffalo, NY. You can see the full list of available VPN cities by checking providers like Surfshark, ExpressVPN, or Nord VPN.

The key insight is that bots cannot generate streams from the thousands of locations that aren't available through commercial VPNs!

**👆 Bookmark this page, highlight this, mark it down, do whatever you have to do to remember this 👆**

If a playlist shows consistent streams from these non-VPN locations, it provides strong evidence of real human listeners that no public bot checker can detect.

Without access to Spotify for Artists data, public bot checkers remain severely limited. At Playlist IQ (our Spotify playlisting service at Record Label AI), we've developed a multi-faceted approach to playlist verification that goes far beyond simple follower graphs:

We evaluate whether playlist titles target legitimate search terms that real users frequently look for. For example, playlists with "Summer" in the title naturally rank higher during summer months because people actively search for seasonal music.

By analyzing search popularity and comparing playlist performance against Spotify's own curated lists, we can identify naturally growing playlists versus artificially promoted ones.

Legitimate playlists often grow through paid promotion - a perfectly valid strategy. We check Facebook Ad Library and other sources to verify if playlists are running or have previously run promotional campaigns to acquire followers organically.

Suspicious profiles often have uniform follower counts across all their playlists regardless of topic. This defies natural audience behavior - different playlist themes naturally attract different audience sizes.

When a curator has 10 playlists all with suspiciously similar follower counts (say, 50,000+), it signals potential manipulation. Legitimate curators show natural variation as some playlist themes are more popular than others.

The relationship between follower growth rate and total playlist followers provides crucial insights into playlist legitimacy. Authentic playlists display organic growth patterns that correlate with their promotional efforts and content quality.

At Playlist IQ, we've developed a sophisticated estimated streams filter that artists can access when selecting playlist curators. This tool analyzes historical performance data and growth metrics to predict potential stream delivery from each playlist. Artists can filter playlists based on these estimates, ensuring they invest their promotion budget in opportunities with genuine audience engagement potential.

This approach moves beyond simplistic ratios to provide artists with actionable intelligence about which playlists offer the best promotional value. Rather than making assumptions based solely on follower counts, our system enables data-driven decisions about playlist submission strategy.

When real humans discover music they enjoy, about 2-10% will save the track to their personal library.

Bot-driven streams tend to show abnormally low save ratios because there's no human actually discovering and enjoying the music.

This metric isn't as useful alone, but in combination with the other things listed in this article, it can aid in detecting a bad playlist.

The public tools available for checking playlist legitimacy provide a false sense of security. Their one-dimensional approach to bot detection misses sophisticated fraud while potentially flagging legitimate playlists.

Proper verification requires a comprehensive approach that considers multiple factors - something only available through platforms with access to deeper Spotify data and sophisticated analysis methods.

At Playlist IQ, we've built our playlist verification system with these complexities in mind, ensuring artists connect with genuinely valuable playlist opportunities rather than wasting resources on artificially inflated lists.

With hundreds of verified playlists across every genre, our system provides musicians with confidence that their promotion budget goes toward real human listeners - not bots.

What truly sets Playlist IQ apart from other promotion platforms is our fundamental approach to the artist-curator relationship. Unlike traditional submission services where artists pay upfront with no guarantee of placement, Playlist IQ operates on a revolutionary model:

1. Not Wasting Your Budget On Rejections: Artists only pay for feedback after curators have given their song an initial quick-scan (assisted by AI). Curators are willing to give this initial review for free because we’ve equipped them with tools to review music 10X faster than other websites.

2. Curator-Initiated Interest: When you submit your track, curators express interest first before you spend a penny. You choose which curators to work with based on data-driven insights about their playlists.

3. Complete Budget Control: Set your own budget for each placement based on estimated stream potential. Our deal rating system helps you identify the most cost-effective opportunities.

4. Transparent Performance Metrics: Access real data about playlist performance, including historical streaming data versus estimates, allowing you to make informed decisions.

5. Fair Curator Compensation: Playlist owners receive fair compensation for legitimate placements. On other sites, you have no idea where on a playlist your song will land. With Playlist IQ, curators will tell what entry position on a list they think is right for your song.

Our platform eliminates the industry-standard "pay-per-rejection" model that profits primarily from curators leaving vague denial notes to artists. Instead, we've built a marketplace where both artists and curators succeed together.

The feedback from artists using our platform speaks volumes about the impact of our approach:

- Budget Efficiency: Artists finally have the tools needed to stretch their promotion budgets 3-5x further compared to traditional services.

- Genuine Audience Growth: The focus on verified playlists results in real fan acquisition, not just empty stream numbers.

- Data-Driven Confidence: Our transparency about playlist performance gives artists certainty about where their promotion dollars are going.

- Growing Curator Network: Hundreds of new legitimate playlists join our platform monthly, continuously expanding genre coverage and audience reach.

The music promotion industry has operated on a broken model for too long. Playlist IQ was built by artists, for artists, to solve the very real challenges of playlist promotion while eliminating the frustrations of traditional services.

Ready to experience a fundamentally different approach to playlist promotion? Here's how to get started:

1. Create your free account at recordlabel.ai
2. Buy some credits & submit your song to curators using the most advanced filtering system in the industry
3. Receive interest from your selected curators
4. Review each curator's estimated playlist performance metrics to maximize your music marketing budget
5. Approve the placements & curators will write you feedback + give a placement schedule within 3 days

With hundreds of verified playlists across every genre, our system provides musicians with confidence that their promotion budget goes toward real human listeners - not bots.

Join the growing community of independent artists who have discovered that effective playlist promotion doesn't have to break the bank or leave you questioning results.

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