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Spotify removes 500K streams
Spotify removed 500,000 streams for Malcolm Todd’s song "Earrings" after an internal investigation found manipulation through artificial streaming, and the track fell to fourth on Spotify’s charts after the stream removals.
“Kalshi and prediction market sector embroiled in mixed bag of legal fights across U”
WIRED reported that Spotify confirmed it investigated suspected manipulation incidents flagged by Kalshi trader Caleb Davies and found evidence of artificial streaming, then adjusted its charts to account for the discrepancy by culling over 500,000 artificial streams.
Davies, a Minneapolis-based IT worker, told WIRED he estimates he’s made $1.2 million overall across different prediction platforms and $414,000 in winnings from Kalshi’s culture markets alone.
Davies said he believed prediction market traders were botting Spotify charts to influence related event contracts, and he wrote in X posts that Todd’s song was "a 11.24 sigma event" on Polymarket’s dataset of Sunday to Monday changes.
WIRED also reported that Kalshi said it was "actively investigating this matter" and that, at Spotify’s request, Kalshi removed Spotify’s logo from markets related to the company and adjusted language suggesting Spotify had verified chart results.
Trader claims and platform response
WIRED described how Davies became increasingly agitated about what he claimed was an obvious, bot-fueled effort to manipulate Spotify-related markets, after "Earrings" by Malcolm Todd surged to number one on a Spotify chart.
Davies told WIRED that he contacted Spotify, Kalshi, and Polymarket with his concerns, and he outlined his suspected culprit as "botting," or scammers who purchase bots to juice streaming numbers.
Kalshi spokesperson Elisabeth Diana told WIRED, "We're in touch with Spotify and are actively investigating this matter," while Davies said he was told by Kalshi’s head of enforcement Robert DeNault that only Spotify could definitively confirm whether it had been botted.
WIRED reported that DeNault floated a theory that Kalshi traders could be merely copying what peers were doing on Polymarket, and Davies said Polymarket’s lack of a "Malcom Todd bracket" undermined Kalshi’s argument.
Polymarket spokesperson Annabel Walsh told WIRED, "It’s actually not plausible since we didn’t even have Malcolm Todd as an option on this Spotify market," as the company said it was reviewing the broader streaming manipulation situation.
Broader incentives and regulatory backdrop
WIRED said the Spotify manipulation case highlighted a new incentive for streaming fraudsters, noting that this year several high-profile arrests were made related to alleged insider trading schemes on Polymarket, though none were tied to streaming charts.
WIRED quoted Amanda Fischer, a former Securities and Exchange Commission chief of staff and policy director and chief operating officer of the Wall Street watchdog nonprofit Better Markets, saying, "They’re obviously readily susceptible to manipulation."
In parallel, CoinDesk described Kalshi and the prediction market sector as embroiled in legal fights across the U.S., with state gaming regulators challenging whether regulators should have authority over platforms seeking to argue users are not gambling.
CoinDesk reported that in Nevada’s Supreme Court Kalshi lost an effort to halt a requirement that it block its customers in the state from much of the platform's trading activity, and it said the denial signed by three state justices said they were "not persuaded" by the business' emergency motion.
TradingView reported that ESMA warned many prediction market event contracts may already fall under existing restrictions on binary options, reminding companies that event contracts meeting the definition of financial instruments are already prohibited from being marketed, distributed or sold to retail investors under national measures implementing ESMA's 2018 binary options restrictions.
