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Can this system be gamed for profit?

1. Setup a short track on one of the linked providers. 2. Setup a bot to play the track over and over.

Do they pay out equally for tracks from paid vs. unpaid spotify accounts? If so, you could setup a bunch of anonymous accounts to increase stream plays.

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Sure,

I missed this talk at Ruxcon this year http://ruxcon.org.au/speakers/#Peter Fillmore

But if you can find a write up of it or a video he goes in to how he actually went about gaming the charts etc... of online music services.

I have a gut feeling Spotify would pick up on the unusual listening activity. If you have a botnet lying around collecting dust, you could always try it and see what happens. My guess is that they have algorithms to detect people trying to game the system.

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