Malcolm Todd is currently one of the fastest-rising stars in the music industry, with his viral hit “Earrings” recently topping the Spotify charts.
However, Todd has just fallen off the Spotify charts after an internal investigation by the company found manipulation through artificial streaming. As a result of the investigation, Spotify removed 500,000 streams for his song. “Earrings” fell to fourth on the charts after the stream removals.
“All streaming services face ever-changing stream manipulation. Spotify has best-in-class detection and mitigation practices for manipulated streams, and we don’t pay out associated royalties,” a Spotify spokesperson said in a statement.
The manipulation has been linked to those who placed bets on prediction markets such as Polymarket and Kalshi. The artist is not believed to be involved, according to Financial Times.
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Both Polymarket and Kalshi allow users to bet on which artists will have the top charting songs. In fact, the investigation into botted listens seems to have been sparked by other prediction market traders who closely analyze Spotify data and noticed fishy activity.
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Last week, Kalshi gave Todd a 2.5 percent chance of having the number one charting Spotify song by the end of June. Earlier this week, in the final days of the month, artificial streaming manipulation caused Todd’s song to skyrocket 70 percent to the top of the charts within a 24-hour period.
Spotify has since confirmed the manipulation after its investigation. The company also requested that Polymarket and Kalshi remove Spotify logos from their websites to prevent users from believing there is a partnership between the entities, according to Bloomberg.
Kalshi and Polymarket are actively reviewing the claims, according to reports from The Hollywood Reporter and Wired.
Prediction markets have grown in popularity in recent years. However, these companies have also struggled to deal with increasingly common cases of insider trading and market manipulation.
