Spotify has removed tens of thousands of phony podcasts promoting illegal online pharmacies, a new investigation has found. The investigation, led by Senator Maggie Hassan, discovered that the podcasts were a “spam attack” designed to boost the visibility of purported online pharmacies in search engines.

Background

Last May, Spotify said it had removed dozens of podcasts identified by CNN that blatantly promoted online pharmacies purportedly selling drugs such as Adderall and Oxycontin, in some cases without a prescription. Senator Hassan launched an investigation into the fake podcasts, which violated Spotify’s rules and threatened to direct users to spammy and potentially illegal sites.

Spotify told investigators that the phony podcasts were not targeted at selling drugs to Spotify users. “Bad actors attempting to abuse our platform will always try to circumvent or evade our detection,” Spotify spokesperson Laura Batey told CNN. “When we are made aware of such attempts, we act quickly to remove the content and update our detection systems accordingly.”

Findings

Spotify had already removed some such content prior to the investigation. It then removed 3,500 podcast accounts and 57,000 individual episodes between May and November of last year, compared to fewer than 100 accounts removed the year prior. Spotify said that 94% of the phony podcasts had never been streamed and 99% had fewer than 10 streams.

Spotify says it has a process to refer content to law enforcement but did not do so for any of the drug-related podcasts it removed last year. One podcast identified by the investigators in July 2025 linked to “opioidstores.com,” which the Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal agencies later seized.

Senator Hassan’s report suggests it’s not just a Spotify problem: Investigators found a small number of similar phony podcasts on other streaming platforms, including iHeart and Amazon Music.

Original reporting: KEYT (Ventura/Santa Barbara) — read the source article.