Spotify has removed more than half a million streams from the song “Earrings” after detecting what it believes were artificial plays, reversing the song’s position on the platform’s U.S. daily chart and raising fresh questions about the intersection of music charts and prediction markets.
The indie-pop track by Malcolm Todd released two years ago briefly climbed to No. 1 on Spotify’s U.S. Daily Top Songs chart for June 29 after recording more than 4.1 million filtered streams. However, Spotify later removed approximately 537,000 streams after an investigation concluded they were likely generated by bots.
According to revised figures shared by music data analyst Gaeten Dugas, the stream removal would have dropped “Earrings” from first place to No. 4, allowing “Choosin’ Texas” to take the top spot with roughly 1.58 million U.S. streams. The charts accompanying Dugas’ analysis compare Spotify’s official filtered numbers with unfiltered data and show a dramatic post-publication correction.
The timing of the stream purge has attracted widespread attention because it came just one day after a prediction market tied to Spotify’s U.S. No. 1 song settled. Traders had placed long-shot bets that “Earrings” would finish at the top of the chart, and those contracts were paid out before Spotify’s fraud detection system removed the suspicious streams.
In a series of posts on X, Dugas criticized the handling of the market, writing that Spotify’s retroactive stream removals changed the outcome after payouts had already been made. He argued that the official chart should have reflected the corrected numbers before the market settled.
“Spotify removed the streams that gave Earrings the win yesterday. It should have been in 4th place, not 1st,” Dugas wrote.
He also noted that Spotify’s unfiltered stream total was unusually lower than its filtered total after the adjustment—an uncommon occurrence that he says reflects Spotify retroactively removing ineligible streams that had previously counted toward the chart.
Spotify has not suggested that Malcolm Todd or his team were involved in any manipulation. The company said it routinely detects and removes artificial streams and does not pay royalties on fraudulent activity.
