French Montana Accused of Hacking Spotify Accounts to Boost Streaming Numbers

A Twitter user is alleging that Epic Records is buying fake Spotify streams.

French Montana's marketing strategies have been placed under a microscope as of late. After his latest album, Montana was surprisingly certified Gold within days of its release.

At the beginning of the new year, Twitter user @karlamagne did some digging about French's single "Writing on the Wall." The track features two Grammy-nominated rappers in Post Malone and Cardi B.

@karlamagne noticed that the song charted on Spotify for five weeks, before falling out. Three weeks later, however, it re-entered the charts, reaching a new peak.

They then determined that TikTok streams were the reason for the song's re-entrance. However, they noticed a strange disparity in the song's popularity between the major streaming services. As of January 2, "Writing on the Wall" was the Number 21-most popular song in America on Spotify, but the 1,192nd-most popular on Apple Music.

The user continued to find multiple tweets from people claiming their Spotify accounts were suspiciously hacked, then directed to play the song.

This past Saturday, however, the song's streaming numbers began to fall again. Apparently, Spotify's Charts division uses a formula that can detect fake streaming. For safety, users replying to the thread advised Spotify account holders to change their passwords and block artists

Montana earned the Gold recognition by including three tracks that were nearly three years old. He originally released "Lockjaw," featuring Kodak Black and "No Shopping," featuring Drake, back in 2016. French intended to place the two tracks on his Mac and Cheese 4 album, but the project was ultimately shelved. Therefore, the tracks' previously-accrued streams factored into the latest release.

Some believe 50 Cent is responsible for the confusion and bought the streams to taunt French. 50 took to Instagram over the weekend to taunt French.

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French quickly replied on Instagram, calling 50 a "dinosaur."

Read the entire thread for yourself on Twitter.

H/T: Digital Music News