Fact check: Did Spotify reveal the cause of ILLIT's streaming success? Viral social media claim debunked

Belift Lab's rookie girl group ILLIT debuted in March 2024 with their EP Super Real Me. The title track Magnetic immediately made a record on Spotify and amassed an incredible 103,923,923 streams by April 20, 2024. The accomplishment makes them the fastest debut single in K-pop history to reach the coveted 100 million streams on the platform.

Several netizens found the group's success on Spotify rather suspicious. Koreaboo reported on May 23, 2024, that a screenshot from Spotify's news page was shared in a post on X that appeared to explain the streaming calculation. Spotify automatically keeps playing comparable songs after a user concludes an album, playlist, or collection of songs.

Furthermore, Spotify's Autoplay function is simply described on the music-streaming website as having the option to play related music when an album or playlist ends. Koreaboo reported on May 23, 2024, that the previously "revealed" feature as per the tweet's screenshot is not mentioned at all and is "convincingly fake."

Hence, the particular tweet of the screenshot could be deemed as fabricated.

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Spotify website shows no trace of the article; netizens claim that the tweet against ILLIT was fabricated

The screenshot showed ILLIT's name alongside Beyoncé, Sabrina Carpenter, The Weeknd, etc. as some of the artists who have utilized this feature to increase their Spotify streams.

Meanwhile, the debut single off the album, Magnetic, immediately captured the attention of fans with its blend of house and plugging components, resulting in a soundscape that amply supports ILLIT's powerful vocal abilities.

Spotify has a "For the Record" page on its website where the music streaming platform publishes articles, news, investor details, and more. It even has a "Fair Play" segment where the Swedish music streaming platform has chalked out every law and their dispute with Apple's third-party app usage policy for its devices.

The screenshot shared by the X user @jnktoowell titled "Update and Clarification on the new Autoplay feature" showed that the article was published on Spotify on May 21, 2024.

It is important to note that Spotify publishes one article per day. Furthermore, Spotify published the following three articles:

• May 22, 2024 — Introducing Spotify Mix, Our New and Exclusive Font
• May 21, 2024 — A Warm Spotify Welcome to Bonnier Books UK and Blackstone Publishing
• May 20, 2024 — Spotify CLASSICS: The 100 Greatest Hip-Hop Songs of the Streaming Era

Nevertheless, a different X user (@_bluejet_) posted a comparable screenshot of Spotify's "Autoplay feature" without ILLIT's name. While both X users posted the screenshot with the same content specified in it, ILLIT's name was absent from the second screenshot shared by @_bluejet_.

However, the second screenshot was dated May 20, 2024, and the user alleged that Spotify must have edited it a day later to remove ILLIT's name.

Additionally, while digging deeper into Spotify's website and in the "What's New" section, there was no account of the particular article on Autoplay. It is crucial to note that the most recent piece in the "What's New" section was "Eurovision" which was published on May 13, 2024.

Nonetheless, Forbes reported that ILLIT became the first girl group to make an unprecedented record on the music-streaming platform with their song Magnetic. As of writing this, the song has amassed over 188,972,460 streams on Spotify, according to the latest data collected by Kworb.net.

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Meanwhile, HYBE's public feud with one of its subsidiary labels ADOR, and its CEO Min Hee-jin has cast a shadow on the rookie girl group's successful debut.