Protect yourself from stream manipulation

At Apple Music, we want every artist to have the opportunity to find their fans, engage with their fans, and see their careers reach heights they had always dreamed of. We know it’s no easy task to make your dreams a reality, which is why we want to provide you with tools and resources to help you build your fanbase organically.

Over the past few years, there has been an industry-wide increase in tactics designed to artificially increase plays of artists’ music on streaming services. This goes against everything we stand for at Apple Music, as we want to provide a fair playing field for artists where success and growth are based on legitimate user listening and activity.

Any company or person that claims they can get you more plays on Apple Music for a fee is not authorized to do so by Apple. Their methods of increasing play counts often include the use of bots, fake accounts, and other means that are prohibited on our services. Partnering with these bad actors hurts artists with legitimate listeners and we discourage it in the strongest possible terms.

Grow your audience organically

As an editorial streaming service, we pride ourselves on curating music to create the best experience for our listeners around the world. The following best practices and tools can help you expand your listener base fairly and organically.

• Make sure you have a solid plan around your release.
• Post often on social media to create connections.
  
• Customize assets to promote your releases.
• Celebrate your Apple Music achievements with shareable Milestones. 
• Use links to directly share your music. 
  
• Update your Apple Music artist page with an artist image and biographical information.
  
• Add or update your lyrics.
• Target cities and towns where your fanbase is located, using Apple Music for Artists to learn more about your fan statistics.
  
• Make your concert dates discoverable in Shazam.
• Keep your website up to date with embeddable players that feature your latest hits.

Empowering yourself with the right information can help protect you as an artist and build your career.