Haha, yeah, it really is! ;)
The other one is a good question as well. Spotify pays out when a song has been listened to for at least 30 seconds. This has been abused in the past as well: https://qz.com/1212330/a-bulgarian-scheme-scammed-spotify-fo...
The article says it is not clear if the fraudsters abused existing user accounts or set up a farm. But apparently, the songs have been played. They all were exactly 30 seconds long - this is the minimum play time for a song to qualify for a payout.