Spotify to Kalshi and Polymarket: Remove Our Logo — Traders Pumped Streams to Win a $3M Bet
Spotify identified over 500,000 artificial streams injected into Malcolm Todd's song 'Earrings' to manipulate its US chart position, then sent formal letters on 2 July demanding that Kalshi and Polymarket remove its branding. The manipulation targeted a $3M Kalshi market on the most-streamed song in the US for June. Kalshi had already paid out bettors before the fraud was confirmed.
Spotify identified and removed more than 500,000 artificial streams injected into Malcolm Todd's song 'Earrings,' which had briefly appeared as one of the most-played tracks on its US charts in June. The inflation was not for chart glory — the target was a $3 million Kalshi prediction market on which song would be most streamed in the US that month. Traders who held contracts on 'Earrings' could profit directly from flooding the song with bots, which is exactly what the evidence suggests happened. Kalshi paid out the market on the inflated figures before Spotify confirmed the manipulation.
On 2 July, Spotify sent formal letters to both Kalshi and Polymarket asking each platform to remove its logo and branding from any markets, and to make clear to users that Spotify has no commercial relationship with either exchange. Kalshi has said it is investigating. Neither platform had disclosed a data or licensing agreement with Spotify before this incident.
The underlying mechanics are a textbook oracle-manipulation problem. When the event that settles a market can be influenced by someone who holds a financial position in it, you have created an incentive for manipulation that scales with contract size. A $3 million market on a Spotify chart position is small by World Cup standards, but the economics work: if artificial streams cost less than the contract payout, rational bad actors will attempt it. Kalshi's entertainment markets use third-party data sources as oracles, and the integrity of those sources is now a first-order platform risk.
For UK observers the episode is instructive. The Gambling Commission's long-standing requirement that fixed-odds betting settle on independently verified, manipulation-resistant data is precisely what this incident illustrates the difficulty of. The CFTC's proposed rule, open for comment until 27 July, is built around the concept of 'objective data with integrity infrastructure.' The Spotify incident will feature prominently in the comment letters filed by those who argue prediction markets are structurally closer to gambling than to financial instruments — and that argument now has a vivid, concrete example.
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