Right, that is exactly what I said. I feel like you misunderstood my comment.
>As far as they are concerned fake and real plays are not much different
This is flagrantly false given that they do care whether plays are legitimate because they do want to be able to verify with advertisers that plays are served to credible clients...
Are you implying that Spotify would expect that advertisers are stupid/inept enough to not notice when a large number of ads are served to fake/bot consumers?
Spotify as a company has the prerogative of acting with integrity in these situations if only for future maintainability/acquisition of relationships with advertisers.
Even if an advertiser was inept enough to not notice their ads were served largely to bots the value of those ads would still ultimately be lowered by them being served to bots. e.g. if 1000 ads are served and 500 are sent to bots, the overall value of each clicked ad is eventually lowered by 50%. This is assuming an advertiser is so inept they aren't measuring clicks per served ad, which doesn't even occur.
I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding why spotify _does_ have to maintain the credibility of those ad clicks/listens/etc...
No real desire to argue the semantics of what I wrote. This is bizarre. Anyhow, the difference is that one situation is an issue of perception and the other is of actual fraud. Not sure why you think perception and reality are identical things.
Botnets 'listening' or 'streaming' is fraud.
That it's not immediately identified is obviously not an issue. E.g spotify isn't affected by the fact that the steps outlined in this post occurred. They are however affected by the fact that this is possible on a larger scale.
The post has demonstrated that the cost of server time for generating 'listens' is less than the amount of royalties paid out. Therefore any artist with the appropriate technical ability could code up a botnet that generates him more revenue then he is spending whilst having literally 0 legitimate fans/listeners.
Are you seriously not able to understand why this is an issue?
Yes; In isolation, this singular post isn't a problem. But when freemoneyforbadmusic.ru pops up offering 10000000 listens for 5$ spotify will have a real problem.
What are you not understanding about this?
There's nothing really semantically wrong with what you've said. It's just factually incorrect.
Spotify definitely has to care in the long run, but it may be better for their chances of making it through that IPO window to see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil until someone forces it upon them. If it worked for Facebook and Twitter, why wouldn't it work for Spotify?
Honestly, this is one of the reasons why 'free' services provide such low value to advertisers unless there's world class fraud fighting capability at the company. If the service is paid, it's significantly more expensive to generate fake traffic. But that'd be bad for the loosey goosey user numbers (AKA 1990s era 'eyeballs') that so excite momentum investors.
There is a vulnerability. It is exploitable. In the long run spotify _will_ be negatively affected if it isn't addressed.
Honestly surprised that there is any arguement whatsoever to the contrary.
If it was, 'well they can make it to IPO before addressing it' as you've stated, sure, that's valid. The parent was saying, 'it's not an issue, it's a matter of perception'.... Which is extremely naive and shortsighted. Perception is the very thing that drives advertisement cost.
Rereading my posts I do seem like a braggadocios douche, but I'm not incorrect at all I don't think; the comment I'm replying to is incorrect though.
That I genuinely feel is true.