Amuse.io second appology - Artists dont let ANYONE screw you!

Related post

• April 2024: 
• My Open Letter to Amuse.io! 
• Amuse second "Apology"! 
• Amuse Corrupt "new" policy!
• March 2024: 
• Holding back Royalties is HARAM!
• Amuse "Apology"! 
• Dealing with music stores!
• Artists, protect your work!
• My Open Letter to Amuse.io! 
• February 2024: 
• Hands away from Amuse.io! 

The lack of respect and the lack of support by music distributors is as shameful and shocking as the UK Post Office scandal! Only the UK Post Office scandal is a national problem. The music industries awful and unlawful treatment with indie artists is a global issue.

Distributors and music stores have the audacity to insult and humiliate indie artist because they know they get away with their BS. They would never treat a signed artist with label, management and law team like they treat indie artists. 

Distributors are supposed to protect artists work and not punish indie-artists! Well, my recent experience with this company was eye-opening! And I'm sharing it publicly, because I know that I'm only one of many victims of a fraud industry dominated by a corrupt fortune hunters!

Received 23. April 2024 from support@amuse.io

Harriet from amuse

Hi Lily,

Thanks for your email and reply.

I'm sorry you have had a negative experience with Amuse and feel as though we are not acting in the best interests of our artists. I can assure you that we work hard to ensure our artists receive fair treatment.

However, we also work closely with the stores. We have a duty to protect and maintain their standards and work within their guidelines.

As you may be aware, Spotify especially take fraudulent streaming very seriously, and have started fining distributors for tracks that receive a certain level of artificial streaming. All distributors are reacting to this by cracking down on signs of streaming fraud, both to maintain the integrity of the artists they work with, and to support Spotify in their endeavours to tackle the issue.

Each distributor (including Amuse) has their own way of analysing streaming data and processes to handle artificial streaming. We are provided a certain amount of information and data from Spotify, however, the more information that Spotify (and indeed distributors) provide to artists about how streamfarming is handled, the less possible it is to reduce it, let alone combat it altogether.

Therefore, as a rule, we do not provide much detail. Our terms of use also dictate that we're able to close down accounts when we suspect streaming fraud. Amuse has acted a) in compliance with our terms of use (which you agreed to upon signing up) and b) as we would with any artist who we deem to have broken the terms of use.

I will also point out that streamfarming doesn't necessarily mean you bought streams. Unfortunately, there are plenty of companies out there who will masquerade as genuine promotional companies who engage in forbidden methods to increase results.

It can also be as simple as being added to a playlist without your knowledge.

Whilst our policy is to deactivate users automatically once they have reached a certain threshold (and meet several other criteria that I cannot divulge), we do have a warning policy in place. In your specific case, activities on your releases met several of the criteria that allowed for immediate deactivation.

Whilst, as mentioned, I cannot detail those criteria, what I can provide you with the following information, all of which is available to you, either through Spotify for Artists or your Amuse statement (attached). Hopefully this will allow you to handle such issues pro-actively moving forwards.

1.    A portion of your streams have been withheld by Spotify from 2022 - 2024. Spotify reports all streams (including withheld) in Spotify for Artists, and you can deduct the number of streams you were paid for (as per your Amuse statement, attached) from the total number of streams in S4A to find out how many. This was not enough of a trigger on its own, but forms part of the overall picture. This is not something we would pro-actively contact you about until certain triggers are reached.

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2.    In early 2024, there was an extreme spike in your streams, from 0-20 per day to over 16k per day. This sort of spike is consistent with streamfarming, as we have found that increases due to genuine promotional campaigns to have a slower, more consistent increase before a significant jump.

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3.    According to our system, there was also a significant amount of streams per listener during the same time period. Our systems indicated around 3k streams per listener, which is again consistent with bot streaming.

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4.    Your releases were added to playlists without names, which generally indicates bot activity.

You mentioned you have worked with Groover. Generally, we would expect our artists to have been fully briefed on the marketing activity around their releases when working with a promotional company, and more importantly question any unexpected spikes, and act quickly to remove their music from any playlists or marketing activity they deem suspicious.

As I mentioned, we will always try and provide a warning where possible. However, in order to maintain the agreement we have with the stores to handle streamfarming, we have to draw the line somewhere. With such significant spikes, the activity on your releases was enough for us to act more strictly.

That being said, we clearly did make a mistake in not taking your releases down - this was a technical issue which I would like to apologise for once again. It is therefore completely fair and reasonable for Amuse to allow you to withdraw the royalties on your account, so I will arrange for your access to be reinstated giving you the ability to withdraw your royalties ASAP. I should have arranged this when we took down your releases, so for this, I also apologise. Please note this is on a non-precedential basis, as we clearly made an error.

I will otherwise consider this matter closed.

Thanks,

Team Amuse