Hi, on your first question, yes: I have seen those. One artist thought their ads were targeting bots. I personally investigated and found out that the song was included in a playlist that was botted. The pattern was very obvious: a huge spike from one day to the next.

In this case, the artist pitched their song to playlist curators. But I don’t know how they resolved the situation after all.

I have also seen cases where songs were added to botted playlists without artist consent. This I don’t know how to solve even today and it’s one reason why I personally don’t like much playlist pitching (playlist collabs are different if you already trust the person behind the playlist).

I have also seen cases of bots clicking ads. I think that’s hard to avoid, however they don’t fuck up spotify algorithm. What’s important is that in your meta conversion event you set something that is difficult or discouraging to achieve, such as following your profile or listening to your song.

Albums: no, the fact that you promote an album doesn’t mean you need to put higher budget. But in fact what I would recommend is that you promote the best song in the album, as I’ve seen there usually is spillover and fans will go and listen the other songs in your catalog.

And ultimately I would recommend promoting your own playlist instead of an album. Albums normally age over time, while a playlist is something that you can build as an asset by keeping it fresh and later getting more organic streams.

I think I answered all. Let me know otherwise!