“How many faking they streams? Getting they plays from machines? I can see behind the smoke and mirrors. Niggas ain’t really big as they seem.”

J. Cole’s calling out of artists faking stream counts is a hard-hitting line in “A Lot,” and along with the negative stigma of being fake, WordPlay T. Jay believes boosting stream numbers is more of a detriment to an artist’s career than it could ever be a helper.

Spotify has been cracking down on fake streams recently, targeting and flagging accounts that attempt to boost numbers for profits or for clout.

Clout is one of the main reasons artists fake streams, hoping to use the “success” to get signed to a label or seem more popular than they really are.

However, if engagement and sales are not tied to the massive stream numbers, the artist is ultimately not building an audience or making true profit.

Even if fake streams get an artist signed, labels have a tendency to chew such artists up and spit them back out, and with debt.

People may think labels do the work after signing, but in truth, labels wait for artists to do the work, sign them, then offer a predatory loan through a contract and force a difficult payback that would be considered illegal in the banking industry.

Fake plays can come from a number of different places, one of which is click farms, where live people literally have a line of devices and stream a song over and over again. This method is easily tracked by the streaming services and flagged as fake.

Any company that guarantees a number of streams or a certain price or a playlist service is most likely illegitimate.

Many times, those playlists are also only listened to by other artists on it, meaning there is no growing audience or new listeners, only passive listeners.

Instead of using any services or attempting to fake plays, a better option is to engage people through Facebook or Instagram ads, or use YouTube pre-roll ads, which are very effective.

An artist can also develop social media posting habits that bring in new engagement and listeners. Find ways to be consistent and good on social media.

For more about faking streams and how to get more plays the right way, check out the video below.