Spotify has removed about 500,000 streams of Malcolm Todd“Earrings” after its sudden rise to the top of the US daily chart, which suspiciously coincided with a bet on the Kalshi prediction market. The company has also asked Kalshi and Polymarket to remove its logo from their websites and clarify that neither platform has a partnership with Spotify.
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The song had been near the top of the chart for weeks, making its eventual rise seem strange. Between June 28 and 29, streams of “Earrings” increased by nearly 70%, propelling it from fourth to first place on Spotify’s US daily chart for the first time.
It has since stabilized at number three after Spotify intervened to remove the streams that caused the rise, raising concerns about manipulated content on Spotify’s charts. Attention initially turned to the betting market itself. Kalshi had listed a contract tied to which song would be the most streamed in the US during June, attracting around $3 million in trading.
In the week before the surge, traders had estimated only about a 2.5% chance that “Earrings” would finish in June at number one, meaning anyone who bought that outcome cheaply could have won about 20 times their bet. A trader named Caleb Davies, who studies Spotify chart data, was the first to spot the anomaly. He calculated the surge from Sunday to Monday as an 11.24 sigma event, suggesting that the chances of it happening by chance were about one in 77 eight million, indicating manipulation rather than a normal chart position.
Spotify's investigation concluded that bots had generated a large portion of the disputed plays, with no suggestion that Todd or his team were involved in the manipulation.
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The financial incentive was entirely on the transaction side, as those who inflated the streams profited from a market that had deemed the outcome unlikely. Kalshi had already paid out bets settled using the incorrect number before Spotify discovered the problem. Spotify said that “all streaming services face ever-changing stream manipulation” and that it has “best-in-class detection and mitigation practices for manipulated streams,” stressing that it does not pay royalties associated with manipulated plays.
A Spotify source said the company will add additional checks to its charts before publication. Kalshi said it “is in contact with Spotify and is actively investigating this issue.” The incident comes as prediction markets have sought to become more deeply integrated into entertainment coverage, a move that has faced criticism since Polymarket revealed a $3 million theft linked to a third-party vendor breach earlier this year.
Kalshi has formed content partnerships with CNN and Fox News, while Polymarket has partnered with the Golden Globes, highlighting the awkwardness of a music chart being manipulated for profit. Both platforms have also faced regulatory challenges in Europe this year over their licensing regime, and Kalshi faced a case involving a MrBeast editor accused of trading with insider knowledge of the creator’s videos.
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Kalshi has introduced new integrity measures, including risk assessment for high-risk purchases and expanded reporting tools, reporting over 150 investigations and blocking more than 100 suspicious insider transactions in the first quarter.
