However, this summer, he has become more agitated over what he claims is an apparent, bot-fueled attempt to manipulate Spotify-related markets. He recently began compiling and publishing evidence for his theory, eventually becoming so convinced that he contacted Spotify, Kalashi, and Polymarket with his concerns.
This week, things came to a head when Malcolm Todd’s song “Earrings” reached number one on the Spotify charts. In a series of X posts, Davis outlined his suspected culprit: “botting,” or scammers who buy bots to juice streaming numbers. Davis argued that prediction market traders were botting the charts to influence the outcome of contracts related to events. Todd’s song was so poor that it wasn’t even listed as an option on Polymarket: “Looking at the dataset of Sunday to Monday changes, this was an 11.24 sigma event, or a 1 in 77 octillion chance at random,” Davis wrote.
This showed he was onto something. Spotify confirmed to WIRED that it investigated the incidents of suspected manipulation flagged by Davis and found evidence of artificial streaming. Spokeswoman Laura Batey says, “All streaming services face ever-changing stream manipulation. Spotify has best-in-class detection and mitigation practices for manipulated streams, and we do not pay related royalties.” (However, the company offered no explanation for the manipulation, so Davis’ theory that it was directly linked to a scheme to manipulate the prediction markets remains just that.)
Spotify eventually adjusted its charts to take the discrepancy into account, removing over 500,000 artificial streams, moving Todd’s song from first to fourth place. However, this process was not immediate, and Kalshi had already decided to reward traders in the market who selected the toad’s song.
“We are in contact with Spotify and are actively investigating this matter,” Kalshi spokeswoman Elizabeth Diana told WIRED. Those conversations prompted more immediate changes: At the Swedish streaming giant’s request, Kalshi removed Spotify’s logo from its markets related to the company, and adjusted language that initially suggested Spotify had verified chart results.
When Davis first reached out to Kalshi with concerns, the company’s head of enforcement Robert Denault told the trader that only Spotify would be able to definitively confirm whether it was botted, and noted that there could be non-suspicious reasons for the spike. Denault also offered a theory that Kalshi traders could simply be copying what they were doing on Polymarket.
“Nobody benefited from the fraud at Polymarket. That’s what weakens Kalshi’s argument, because they didn’t have Malcolm Todd Brackett,” Davis told WIRED.
Polymarket refutes this theory as well. Spokeswoman Annabel Walsh said, “It’s not really plausible because we didn’t even have Malcolm Todd as an option in this Spotify market.” The company confirmed that it is reviewing the broader streaming manipulation situation, but no immediate manipulation has been identified so far.
No one has spoken to the people or group of people behind the streaming manipulation, so their intentions are unclear. (Todd did not respond to requests for comment, but there’s nothing to suggest he’s anything more than an innocent bystander.)
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