ft.com/content/2e10851c-9f47-410d-b46e-2a617118b05a

Spotify has removed more than half a million streams of a song that shot to number one in its US chart after discovering that the surge in streaming coincided with a jump in suspicious wagers on prediction market Kalshi.

US streams of “Earrings”, an indie-pop track by singer-songwriter Malcolm Todd, rose almost 70 per cent between Sunday and Monday on Spotify. That propelled the song, first released in 2024, to number one on the platform’s daily US chart.

In the preceding week, traders on Kalshi had been pricing only around a 2.5 per cent probability that Todd would have a number-one song on Spotify USA before the end of June.

After an investigation, Spotify on Wednesday removed streams of “Earrings” that it believed were initiated by bots, which are programmed to play tracks on repeat to artificially boost their popularity.

That would have pushed the track down to fourth in the Spotify USA chart for Monday, but by then Kalshi had already paid out to the traders who bet on the long-shot outcome.

we can finally stop caring about streaming numbers now

Malik Beasley type beat

Online gambling is genuinely cancer

Need everyone who propagated it to be hung drawn and quartered immediately

didn’t see this song charting on Apple Music

maybe bots are a Spotify exclusive?

who tf is Malcolm todd

As expected of degenerate scum who use Kalshi #stakepartner

Unless it's Drake, he doesn't need to bot like Kdot or Orod. His numbers are straight facts

lock the chart thread

its more of a thing on spotify because streams are displayed but the spotify chart filters out bot and repeat streams.