The prediction market people are screwing with Spotify now
Spotify has reportedly had to scrub 500,000 streams for Malcolm Todd's "Earrings" from its charts, after allegations that they were manipulated for a bet.
Although picking one single worst thing about the rise of “prediction markets” like Kalshi and Polymarket is a bit like choosing your favorite entrée at the shit buffet—because regardless of what you end up selecting, it’s probably going to wind up tasting like, well, shit—we do have a special anti-fondness for the way these apps seem to be sucking more and more of reality into their alternate grifter universe. We’ve written before about how the basic idea of “Now you can bet on anything” has infected everything from Fox News to Survivorto Facebook, but it turns out that the apps are coming for music, now, too. This is per THR, which reports that Spotify has just had to strip 500,000 streams from a recent hit song after it was determined that a healthy chunk of that activity may have bene spurred on by prediction market bets.
The song in question: “Earrings,” by Malcolm Todd, which, although released back in 2024, has been steadily climbing Spotify’s charts after going viral on TikTok earlier this year. And then climbing much more rapidly, apparently, after bets begin appearing on Kalshi, focused on its placement on the music streamer’s charts. (To be clear, nobody involved with Todd or his team have been alleged to have anything to do with any of this; just more victims of the prediction market mindset.)
Spotify, for its part, sounds like a weary old hand at this kind of thing at this point: Although it’s asked both Kalshi and Polymarket to please take its logo off of their sites—reminding everybody that it does not, and never has, had a partnership with either of them—it also noted that people have been trying to manipulate its chart placements since pretty much the day it started linking song plays to actual cash payouts. “All streaming services face ever-changing stream manipulation,” the company said in a statement. “Spotify has best in class detection and mitigation practices for manipulated streams, and we don’t pay out associated royalties.” A source for the streamer also added that Spotify will be “adding additional checks to the charts before they’re published” in the future to try to avoid this kind of blatant manipulation.
For what it’s worth, manipulating the subject of a bet is against the rules of all of the prediction markets, with Kalshi claiming that it’s investigating the Spotify allegations specifically. The actual reality, though, is that prediction markets generate huge financial incentives for people to screw with anything they can get their hands on, creating ever more reasons for people to artificially manipulate the world around them to make a buck.
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