Spotify has removed 500,000 streams from a global number-one hit due to a suspicious bet on the online prediction market Kalshi.

The track in question is ‘Earrings’ from American singer-songwriter Malcolm Todd, which was first released in 2024, but jumped by almost 70 per cent in streams between June 27th and June 28th.

Kalshi had previously offered a 2.5 per cent chance just the week before that Todd would secure a number one in the Spotify USA chart before the end of June.

After an investigation, Spotify subsequently removed the streams from ‘Earrings’ that they believed were artificially manufactured by bots.

Although the removal of the streams would have moved ‘Earrings’ down to fourth on the chart, by this point, Kalshi had already paid out to those who had successfully bet on the market. It’s estimated that traders would have made around 20 times their outlay.

Spotify spokesperson Laura Batey shared, “All streaming services face ever-changing stream manipulation. Spotify has best-in-class detection and mitigation practices for manipulated streams, and we don’t pay out associated royalties.”