Most artists deal with stream reduction.
Koreaboo
1 hour ago
One measure of popularity lies in streaming results, with fans monitoring the streams their favorite artists receive. Of the various platforms, Spotify is arguably the most popular internationally, showing the total number of streams a track, album, or artist has received and allowing metrics to be recorded.
Bad Bunny’s Spotify Page | Spotify
With so many artists to analyze, Spotify has taken preventative measures to prevent streaming inflation. The platform regularly conducts mass removals of streams it deems “fraud” or “artificial,” as defined on its website.
An artificial stream is a stream that doesn’t reflect genuine user listening intent, including any instance of attempting to manipulate Spotify by using automated processes (e.g. bots or scripts).
— Spotify on its stream protection
As a result, many artists will suffer from having their streams removed because the system detects listens as fraud, usually at the beginning of a calendar month.
During the removal of streams at the beginning of February 2026, it was noted that South-African artist Tyla‘s track “Chanel” lost over a million streams.
Tyla | Spotify
‘Chanel’ by Tyla “received” -1,125,996 unfiltered streams on Spotify on February 1, following Spotify’s removal of streams#SN_Tyla pic.twitter.com/yWQSnJZ55F
— Spotify Numbers (@Spotify_numbers) February 2, 2026
It was also noted that this was the first time this has occurred since HYBE was announced a global management partnership with Brandon Hixon and Colin Gayle, co-managers of Tyla. With this recent loss of streams, it was also pointed out that members of BTS also lost large amounts of streams due to filtering.
Some albums are missing from the list since some tracks had negative updates following Spotify’s monthly stream adjustments. pic.twitter.com/iUefERNKvH
— Pop Stats (@PopStats07) February 2, 2026
This has sparked a discussion on HYBE’s alleged blame for the “fraud” streams, using Tyla’s new filtered numbers as proof.
notice how she started losing streams for the first time right after coming under hybes management. https://t.co/oCouWjYWWo pic.twitter.com/bg6Q67b6HG
— Truth (@LLP20002) February 2, 2026
Hybe effect https://t.co/x0xWWx7eJz pic.twitter.com/yWZ8JokDTi
— Hephaestion (@Hephaestio19395) February 3, 2026
I just knew this company would ruin her image .
This is so bad for her … NGL https://t.co/T6UMl1VApG pic.twitter.com/suN7SrvARj
— nobody’s boy ♡ (@genuinelykelvin) February 2, 2026
BTS Jimin’s streams were discussed last year in the same light, which you can read more about below.
BTS’s Jimin Loses Over 200 Million “Fraud” Streams — Other Popular Idols Also Hit