Spotify pulls 500,000 fake streams tied to Kalshi prediction market bets

Spotify has removed more than 500,000 artificial streams from Malcolm Todd's song "Earrings" after a trader flagged suspicious activity tied to bets placed on the prediction market Kalshi, according to reporting from Bloomberg, Music Business Worldwide, and The Hollywood Reporter published July 2-3, 2026.

Why It Matters

"Earrings," a Columbia Records single that had been on US pop radio since April 14, jumped roughly 70% in a single day to reach No. 1 on Spotify's daily US chart on June 29 before falling back to No. 4 once the manipulated streams were pulled. The spike coincided with a Kalshi market worth about $3 million betting on which song would be the most-streamed track in the US for June — part of a broader $400 million in music-related trading Kalshi had processed on its platform this year as of late April.

Details

A prediction-market trader flagged the jump as statistically implausible, estimating the odds of it occurring naturally at roughly one in 77 octillion. Spotify confirmed the streams were bot-generated and said it would not pay royalties on them, adding in a statement that "all streaming services face ever-changing stream manipulation" and that it maintains "best in class detection and mitigation practices." The complication: Kalshi had already settled the $3 million market and paid out bettors based on the inflated numbers before Spotify's findings came in.

Implications

Spotify sent Kalshi and Polymarket formal notices on July 2 demanding both platforms remove Spotify's branding and clarify that neither has any partnership with the streaming service, framing the episode as a structural conflict between its chart system and markets betting on it rather than an isolated incident. Spotify says it will add extra verification checks before charts are published going forward. Kalshi said it is "in touch with Spotify and actively investigating." The episode is likely to draw fresh scrutiny to how prediction markets settle bets on data — like music charts — that were never designed to be gambled on, and whether platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket need direct data-integrity agreements with the companies whose numbers they're trading.

This story was reported by Music Business Worldwide, with additional reporting from Bloomberg and The Hollywood Reporter.