Popular Artist Loses Over A Million Streams, Sparking Discussion On “HYBE Fraud”

Most artists deal with stream reduction.
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Koreaboo

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.

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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.

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Tyla | Spotify

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.

This has sparked a discussion on HYBE’s alleged blame for the “fraud” streams, using Tyla’s new filtered numbers as proof.

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

 

 

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