I find your tone generally inappropriate for HN. I think you are letting your justified distaste for click fraud distract you from the legitimate questions raised by the article.
> The line in the DistroKid email that stood out to me was that “Real people don't listen to the same exact song thousands of times in a row.” The problem with this sentence is that a real person did generate these plays, using only Spotify’s internal “repeat 1” button.
I am inclined to agree that this is abusive behavior which is gaming the system. It is unclear to me what exactly makes this fraud. There was no use of scripts or a bot network, this was just someone using spotify's app in an unusual way. This is no misrepresentation here, no intent to deceive.
Spotify is certainly a private company that has no obligation to host anyone's music. If the market place isn't sufficiently competitive, than can create problems.
I think all of this points to underlying problems with the current economic model of pay-per-listen streaming. It invites spam and click fraud which in turn must be combated with opaque censorship rules about what we are allowed to listen to and how.
Well I think being vocally incredulous of anonymous tests is a valid perspective when it's framed in such fawning prose and should be treated as spurious of merit. I think there are simply no legitimate questions raised by the article. Rather, the author starts with a perspective and spends the entire time raising justifications for their doubt, and fails to provide compelling evidence that such "threats" are credible. Forgive me if I sincerely doubt the claim that the anonymous human actually clicked that Reapeat 1 button 45,000 times in the timeframe listed, which as noted in another comment, is akin to a full-time job - if actually true, it only goes to prove the inherit merit of Spotify's internal controls. Not the opposite of empty FUD speculation, which is pervasive in the article.
> Forgive me if I sincerely doubt the claim that the anonymous human actually clicked that Reapeat 1 button 45,000 times in the timeframe listed, which as noted in another comment, is akin to a full-time job - if actually true, it only goes to prove the inherit merit of Spotify's internal controls.
> The line in the DistroKid email that stood out to me was that “Real people don't listen to the same exact song thousands of times in a row.” The problem with this sentence is that a real person did generate these plays, using only Spotify’s internal “repeat 1” button.
I am inclined to agree that this is abusive behavior which is gaming the system. It is unclear to me what exactly makes this fraud. There was no use of scripts or a bot network, this was just someone using spotify's app in an unusual way. This is no misrepresentation here, no intent to deceive.
Spotify is certainly a private company that has no obligation to host anyone's music. If the market place isn't sufficiently competitive, than can create problems.
I think all of this points to underlying problems with the current economic model of pay-per-listen streaming. It invites spam and click fraud which in turn must be combated with opaque censorship rules about what we are allowed to listen to and how.