In modern America, it feels like everything is gambling. Companies like Kalshi and Polymarket are essentially monetizing every piece of our day. You can bet on anything from sports to what the weather will look like tomorrow. It’s extremely morbid, and music has felt its effects firsthand.
In a new report from WIRED, traders on Kalshi have been accused of manipulating Spotify’s charts in favor of Malcolm Todd’s “Earrings”. In skewing the numbers on streams, bettors end up winning big based on how they predicted. Investigators determined that there were bot streams boosting the song’s popularity. However, it hasn’t been confirmed that the traders were responsible for deploying the bots.
This only came to light when WIRED spoke with Caleb Davies, an expert in the music prediction market who roughly earned $1.2 million from betting sites. However, upon investigating the sudden emergence of Malcolm Todd’s song, he believed that the odds of it reaching the number one spot were far too implausible to happen organically.
Consequently, Spotify removed over 500,000 streams from “Earrings” in order to correct the numbers. However, there is no evidence that Malcolm Todd himself is behind the streaming bots inflating his numbers.
Kalshi Traders Allegedly Inflated Streams With Bots to Win Predictions
Naturally, this put a sour taste in the mouths of fans and people in the music industry. For instance, rapper and R&B singer Russ, known for being an independent artist, slammed how the industry machine makes everything come off fake nowadays. Artists will have no idea if they have a genuine hit on their resume or if Kalshi traders boosted it for profit.
“So allegedly people can bet on a song going #1, manipulate the streams, cash the bet, and the artist reputation takes a hit even tho they might not even know it’s happening. Insane. Maybe not everything needs a betting market lol,” Russ tweeted.
Similarly, Atlanta rapper Deante’ Hitchcock looked at this phenomenon as more reason to sell albums on your own. If streaming can’t prove to be a reliable scale because of Kalshi, it’s worth actually buying a record and supporting the artist accordingly. Then, he bragged about being able to sell an impressive amount of albums independently.
“Everybody buying numbers and views to look bigger. Alot of this streaming s*** ain’t even real anymore. What is real though lol is being able to sell 100k albums to the people independently,” Hitchcock told his fans.
The post Spotify and Kalshi Under Fire for Allegedly Tampering With Spotify’s Charts for Music Prediction Markets appeared first on VICE.
