This week we get into the meat of Spotify streaming manipulation. We’ve already discussed the history, but how did Spotify become so influential? And why?

The advent of music streaming opened new avenues for questionable promotion tactics to thrive. While piracy dealt a blow to record sales in the 1990s and 2000s, streaming's growth led to playlists becoming hugely influential.

Getting on a top Spotify playlist can bring an artist millions of streams overnight. But with intense competition, some turn to shady methods for infiltration. Fake bot accounts, incentivised listens, and even playlists curators demanding payment to be on large playlists are used to artificially inflate plays.

The goal is gaming Spotify's algorithms and human curators to appear more popular than the music merits. Companies openly sell packages guarante ...