Spotify confirms streaming fraud after Kalshi merchant made a mistake

Top trader kalshi Caleb Davis often talks to the press about how prediction markets help him raise money. The Minneapolis-based IT worker estimates that he has earned $1.2 million overall across various forecasting platforms, with earnings of $414,000 from Kalshi Cultural Markets alone. He especially enjoys betting on music charts, as he carefully analyzes Spotify data to pick winners. “Every morning, I download the data and update my forecast,” he tells WIRED.

However, this summer he has become increasingly uneasy over what he claims is an apparent bot-fueled effort to manipulate Spotify-related markets. He recently began compiling and publishing evidence supporting his theory, eventually becoming so convinced that he contacted Spotify, Kalshi, and Polymarket to voice his concerns.

This week the situation reached a boiling point when Malcolm Todd’s “Earrings” soared to number one on the Spotify chart. In a series of Davies argued that predictive market traders were manipulating charts to influence the outcomes of contracts for related events. Todd’s song was so underdog that it wasn’t listed as an option on Polymarket: “Given the data set of changes from Sunday to Monday, the event had an 11.24 sigma, or roughly 1 in 77 octillion, chance of occurring randomly,” Davies wrote.

It turns out he was on to something. Spotify confirmed to WIRED that it investigated the suspected manipulation incidents reported by Davis and found evidence of artificial streaming. “All streaming services face ever-changing streaming processing. Spotify has best practices for detecting and mitigating the effects of manipulated streams, and we do not pay the royalties associated with them,” says spokeswoman Laura Patti. (However, the company offered no explanation for this manipulation, so Davies’ theory that it was directly related to a scheme to manipulate prediction markets remains valid.)

Spotify eventually adjusted its charts to account for the discrepancy, culling over 500,000 artificial streams, bumping Todd’s song from No. 1 to No. 4. The process was not immediate, and Calci had already dissolved the market to reward traders who chose Todd’s song.

“We are in contact with Spotify and are actively investigating this matter,” Calci spokesperson Elizabeth Diana told WIRED. Those conversations led to a more immediate change: At the request of the Swedish streaming giant, Calci removed Spotify’s logo from its marketplaces related to the company, and modified language that initially indicated Spotify had verified chart results.

When Davies first reached out to Calci with his concerns, the company’s head of enforcement, Robert Denault, told the trader that only Spotify would be able to definitively confirm whether it had been hacked, and suggested that there may be unsuspected reasons for the spike. DeNault also put forward a theory that Calci traders might just be copying what their peers at Polymarket were doing.

“No one at Polymarket benefited from the scam. And that undermines Calci’s argument, because they didn’t have Malcolm Todd’s arc,” Davis told WIRED.

Polymarket refutes this theory as well. “It’s actually unbelievable because we didn’t even have Malcolm Todd as an option in the Spotify marketplace,” company spokeswoman Annabelle Walsh said. The company confirmed that it is reviewing the case of broadcast tampering on a larger scale, but has not identified any immediate tampering yet.

No one has spoken to the people or group of people behind the broadcast manipulation, so their motives remain unclear. (Todd did not respond to requests for comment, but there is nothing to suggest he is anything more than an innocent bystander.)