Spotify Removes Fake Streams after Surprise Number One Song Sparks Betting Manipulation Fears

The chart pop was real enough to trigger alarms — then Spotify revised it

According to reports citing the Financial Times and The Hollywood Reporter, “Earrings” jumped hard enough to briefly top Spotify’s daily U.S. chart. One report says the track saw a nearly 70 percent rise in U.S. streams between Sunday and Monday, moving from the top five into the top slot.

Spotify later removed around 500,000 streams it identified as fake or manipulated. The revised chart reportedly would have placed the song at No. 4 instead of No. 1 for that day. The company said streaming manipulation keeps evolving, but that it has detection and mitigation systems in place and does not pay royalties on manipulated streams.

The cleanest part of the story matters: there is no suggestion in the available reporting that Malcolm Todd or his team were involved. That distinction is not PR fluff — it is essential. In the streaming era, a song can become the vehicle for someone else’s hustle without the artist ever touching the wheel.

Betting markets just made chart manipulation more profitable

The ugly twist is Kalshi. Traders had reportedly wagered on whether Todd would land a No. 1 Spotify song in the U.S. before the end of June. Before the upset, one report says the market priced that outcome at roughly 2.5 percent. After the song hit No. 1, bettors who backed the long shot were paid, with reported returns around 20 times their original stake.

Then Spotify revised the chart — too late to change those betting results, according to the reporting.

That is the fracture point. Hip-hop has been living with chart games for years: mass buying, stan-army streaming shifts, playlist politics, bot farms, deluxe-album padding, the whole bag. But once an outside betting market turns chart position into a cash-out event, the old incentives mutate. It is no longer just “my favorite artist needs a No. 1.” It becomes “I can profit if I can push this number over the line.”

That changes the risk profile for everyone. A rising artist sitting near the top five is suddenly not just having a moment — they may be sitting inside someone else’s arbitrage play.

What the culture should watch now

Spotify has reportedly told The Hollywood Reporter it will add additional checks before charts are published. The company has also asked Kalshi and Polymarket to remove Spotify logos from their sites, with reporting noting Spotify has no partnership with either. Kalshi said it is in touch with Spotify and investigating.

That logo detail sounds small, but it is not. Prediction platforms want the cultural cachet of charts because charts are clean, public scoreboards. Music companies want control over how their data is used because that data drives reputation, royalty flows, booking leverage, label pressure, and public narrative. Once those scoreboards are repackaged as betting products, every data delay, revision, and suspicious spike becomes a potential dispute.

For artists and teams, the practical read is blunt: do not treat a sudden chart rocket like an automatic victory lap. If the spike is too clean, too late, or too disconnected from the rest of the song’s trajectory, expect scrutiny. For fans, the same rule applies: a No. 1 screenshot is not the whole story anymore. Ask what got counted, what got removed, and who had money riding on the outcome.

This is where streaming’s credibility gets tested. Not by one song, not by one platform, not by one betting market — but by the collision of all three. The industry spent years teaching everyone that numbers equal truth. Now the numbers have a gambling market attached. That truth is about to get expensive.