Spotify was embroiled in a controversy after several BTS fans claimed that a large portion of their streams were filtered and not counted to increase the ranking of the new single 'Butter'. Many fans even accused the music streaming service of being racist towards the South Korean band.
'Butter', the second English language single from the all-boys k-pop band, has been ruling the charts globally since it was released few days ago. It received over 13 million views within 10 minutes of being released on YouTube.
Is Spotify Deliberately Sabotaging Butter ?
All KPop reported that a large number of fans, who call themselves 'army', posted the global Spotify filter rates charts, obtained from BHF Data Analytics.
The charts showed that BTS songs had been filtered much more than other artists. The fans also pointed out that 47% of the streams were not counted for "Butter" while 38% were not counted for the band's first English language solo, "Dynamite."
Responding to an email sent by one of the fans pointing out that the streaming rate of Butter has not increased, Spotify responded saying that they systems in place to make sure that all streams are legitimate. "We can't share the exact info on how streams are counted in order to prevent manipulation. Diving deep into the analytics of this is something we can't do right now as we do not have the appropriate resources or functionality for it."
BTS Fans Ask Spotify to be Investigated
BT reported that Butter has created Spotify history by becoming the biggest song debut on the streaming platform. 'On Friday, May 21, it got 11.042 million streams, breaking Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber's record of 10.977 million for their song "I Don't Care." "Butter" is the ninth-biggest single-day streaming total, reported the outlet further.
Enraged BTS fans demanded that the music streaming service be investigated for the issue. "There's suspicious actions going on behind the scenes for BTS. There should be no reason why our streams are highly filtered compared to other artist. To dictate that the streams aren't done correctly by your standards there needs to be clarity in the process. #investigatespotify" wrote a BTS fan on Twitter.
"Could you stop being racist against bts and filtering half of our streams for butter? FIX THIS @Spotify," wrote another fan.
"@Spotify @spotifycharts wtf is up with y'all?? We expect a full thread of explanation for taking so long to update, why with bts only? Racist much? Be transparent with us ffs, or else industry plants and definitely shady sht happened in here, does bts scare u that much?" a tweet read.
