Spotify has removed millions of artificial streams from major K-pop artists like BTS and BLACKPINK in its latest crackdown on fraudulent plays.
Spotify has carried out another sweeping removal of “artificial” plays from its service, and this month’s clean-up has landed hardest against two of the biggest streaming names in K-pop: BTS and BLACKPINK.
Millions of questioned listens disappeared overnight, shrinking headline figures and reigniting discussions about the extent to which mass-streaming strategies have been inflating the genre’s worldwide success.
At the start of every month, the platform runs an automated audit to flag plays thought to be from bots, click-farms, or scripted “loop” services instead of real listeners. July’s audit ended late on 4 July, and again, the most dramatic correction.
Based on monitoring by industry outlets, BTS member Jimin lost over 200 million lifetime streams for his 2024 solo track “Who” all in one pass, in addition to tens of millions lost in earlier audits.
He wasn’t the only one. Fellow BTS members Jungkook, V, and Jin each had a range of between 13 million and 15 million streams removed from songs including “Seven,” 3D, “Winter Ahead,” and “Don’t Say You Love Me.”
Although those stream removals are modest when compared to their total catalogue stream measurements, they demonstrate how aggressively many of their songs were streamed during the band’s recent military service hiatus period.
BLACKPINK experienced it too, although at a much smaller impact. Fan-compiled before-and-after screenshots that matched Spotify’s public counters had either Jennie’s (“Like Jennie”) or Rosé’s (“Rosie”) solo releases relinquishing “about two million” streams.
Group tracks are relatively untouched, but some critical observers point out that if there is any revision to future BLACKPINK mega-hits, it could impact their overall stream count as the most-streamed (female) band on the service.
Spotify describes an artificial stream as “a stream that doesn’t reflect actual user listening intent, which includes any attempts to manipulate streaming services (through automated processes such as bots or scripts).”
The company continues to stress that these plays pay no royalties, do not affect recommendations or algorithms, and will be deleted from public totals once identified or claimed.
The recent crackdown points to a larger tension woven into the fabric of digital music. As streaming music has helped K‑pop reach a fast-growing world share of 362 % in five years through diversified artist spending according to Spotify, it has also given rise to broad access for manipulation services that sell “guaranteed” placements, or loop farming.
Spotify is now part of the music industry’s Music Fights Fraud alliance and states it will continue to improve its detection models.
For now, BTS and BLACKPINK still hold the position of streaming titans. BTS has a spring 2026 group comeback expected, and BLACKPINK is launching their “DEADLINE” world tour tonight in Seoul. However, the most recent purge is a strong statement: inflated numbers won’t last.
As Spotify’s automated broom gets smarter by the month, it may be time for artists, labels, and fandoms to rethink how they chase those monumental, eye‑catching benchmarks.
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