$1 can buy roughly 1,000 fake Spotify streams from bots, creating a simple path to fraudulent royalty payouts.
Those same 1,000 streams can earn about $2 in artist royalties, making the scheme profitable enough to scale despite its small per-unit return.
The economics help explain why fake-streaming fraud persists: automated plays are cheap to produce, while platform payouts still reward volume.
U.S. prosecutors have already pursued at least one alleged fake-streaming case, underscoring that the tactic is not just a platform problem but a criminal one.