Chapter 613: Audit the Streams
The first argument did not begin inside JD Records.
It began inside a fan forum at 2:17 in the morning, when most reasonable people had either gone to sleep or decided that charts were bad for their health.
The forum was called JD World Board, and it had existed long before Dayo became too large for ordinary fan language. In the early days, it had been a small place where people shared lyric guesses, family clips, studio rumors, and badly edited memes of Dayo looking too serious in interviews. Now it had become a restless international hive with moderators in six time zones, translation teams, chart watchers, playlist organizers, fan artists, collectors, and the kind of supporters who could turn a normal disagreement into a seventy-page thread before breakfast.
The thread title was simple.
Twenty Billion and Still Fighting Spikes? Somebody Explain This.
The post came from an account named ArchiveBoy, one of the old fans who had followed Dayo from before the Global Stage run. He was not the loudest fan on the board, which made people click faster. When loud fans shouted, everyone expected emotion. When ArchiveBoy posted charts at 2:17 a.m., people expected trouble.
He opened with the two-week report that had begun circulating after the fourteen-day hold.
Beautiful Things — Global Streams, First Fourteen Days
Day One: 2.84B
Day Two: 2.07B
Day Three: 1.81B
Day Four: 1.36B
Day Five: 1.58B
Day Six: 1.72B
Day Seven: 1.43B
First Week Total: 12.81B
Day Eight: 1.32B
Day Nine: 1.18B
Day Ten: 1.09B
Day Eleven: 1.01B
Day Twelve: 1.16B
Day Thirteen: 1.08B
Day Fourteen: 1.12B
Second Week Total: 7.96B
Fourteen-Day Total: 20.77B Global Streams
Under the numbers, he wrote:
I am not saying every rival stream is fake. I am asking why a song doing twenty billion streams, carrying the biggest live-version replay wave we have ever seen, and pulling challenge entries from every continent was still being nearly cornered by sudden hourly jumps in the same regions at the same times. Cassian Vale is strong. Eclipse Crown is strong. That does not explain everything.
The thread moved slowly for the first five minutes.
Then the chart watchers arrived.
A fan from Canada posted screenshots of Cassian Vale’s U.S. and Canada spikes during two reporting windows, pointing out that the growth was too clean across several playlists that did not usually move together. A Korean JD fan translated a thread from local chart spaces showing Eclipse Crown’s domestic support was real and powerful, but that some international clusters outside South Korea and Japan looked strange compared to visible engagement. Another fan from Brazil added that several accounts pushing "Dayo fatigue" had also posted coordinated Cassian clips and Eclipse Crown teaser edits within minutes of one another.
The argument grew teeth from there.
LagosDataGirl wrote that JD fans needed to be careful because organized fandom work could look strange to outsiders even when it was real. She reminded everyone that Beautiful Things had its own massive replay campaigns, live-version parties, physical-buying pushes, and challenge waves. If fans accused everyone else of cheating without evidence, they might hand enemies a reason to question Dayo too.
That warning did not calm the thread.
It only made it louder.
StarboyMilan replied that the issue was not normal fandom work. He posted a comparison between visible engagement and platform spikes, arguing that Cassian’s growth had surged in windows where social chatter did not match the climb. YuriDefenseClub, despite the name, was not Korean but a Nigerian student in Manchester who had become famous on the board for translating JD Korea updates faster than some official fan pages. He argued that Eclipse Crown’s core fandom should not be insulted because their Korean and Japanese numbers made sense, but the international push around them looked like it had been fed by something outside ordinary fan labor.
By 3:04 a.m., the thread had crossed twenty pages.
By 3:31, someone wrote the phrase that would escape the board.
Audit the streams.
At first, it appeared as irritation.
Then it became a demand.
A moderator stepped in when people began suggesting that fans should flood Cassian Vale’s latest post. The moderator’s warning was clear: do not harass artists, do not use slurs, do not threaten people, and do not turn suspicion into abuse.
The warning was necessary.
It was also too late.
Screenshots of the thread had already left the forum.
On X, a JD fan account with more than two million followers posted ArchiveBoy’s stream breakdown and added one sentence:
Beautiful Things did 20.77B in fourteen days and still had to fight sudden miracle spikes from two MM-backed releases, so yes, audit the streams.
The post exploded.
Within an hour, Audit the Streams began climbing.
JD fans poured into chart-account replies with screenshots, graphs, and accusations that ranged from reasonable to ridiculous. The careful ones asked for verification of the fourteen-day campaign window. The angry ones accused Cassian Vale and Eclipse Crown of being carried by bots. The reckless ones took the accusation directly into the artists’ comment sections.
Cassian Vale had posted a short clip thanking fans for supporting After Midnight. Within minutes, JD fans filled the replies demanding an audit. Some wrote long explanations about suspicious U.S. and Canada spikes. Others simply repeated the phrase until the comment section became unreadable.
Eclipse Crown’s official account received the same treatment after posting a dance-practice teaser. Korean and international fans were already sensitive to bot accusations because organized fandom streaming was often misunderstood by outsiders. JD fans arriving with audit demands only made the reaction sharper.
For once, Cassian fans and Eclipse Crown fans did not fight each other.
They turned together.
The alliance was not formal, but it formed quickly because both artists stood on the same side of the chart war and were backed by the same label machinery. Cassian fans argued that JD fans were acting like sore winners, unable to accept that another American pop artist could nearly catch Dayo in the U.S. Eclipse Crown fans accused JD fans of disrespecting Korean fandom culture and treating every strong comeback as suspicious. Together, they pushed back with their own phrase.
Respect Real Fans.
By morning, the internet had split into camps.
JD fans insisted that the numbers did not match the visible world. Cassian and Eclipse Crown fans answered that visible engagement was not the same as platform behavior and that Dayo’s fandom had no right to question everyone else after celebrating the largest streaming run in music history. Neutral chart watchers tried to separate genuine questions from fan arrogance, but neutrality did not trend as easily as anger.
A popular Cassian fan account wrote:
Dayo fans already got the fourteen-day hold. Their song has twenty billion streams. Why are they camping under Cassian’s posts because he almost caught them in America? Other artists are allowed to compete.
An Eclipse Crown fanbase replied:
Exactly. Organized fandoms are not bots. JD fans loved global unity when it helped them, but now Korean fans show power and suddenly everyone is fake.
A JD account quote-posted both:
Nobody said fandom support is fake. We said the same promo routes that pushed Dayo fatigue also pushed both of your campaigns, and the hourly spikes look manufactured. Put the numbers under review if everything is clean.
That was the post that pulled neutral accounts deeper into the fight.
Because the accusation had changed.
It was no longer only about Cassian Vale.
It was no longer only about Eclipse Crown.
It was about the machinery around them.
Inside JD Records, Sharon saw the trend before Alice did.
That was rare enough to make her move faster.
She entered Alice’s office with her tablet already turned outward. Alice looked up from a post-hold confirmation draft and read the screen in silence.
"How bad?" Alice asked.
"Messy and growing."
"Did we start it?"
"No. It began on JD World Board. ArchiveBoy posted the two-week stream breakdown and asked about the spikes. Then bigger accounts took it outside."
Alice stood. "Dayo?"
"In the studio with Luna."
Alice closed her laptop halfway, then stopped herself and opened it again because work did not respect drama. "Get Mara, Felix, and legal. Wayne too if he is awake."
"He is awake."
"Unfortunately?"
"Loudly."
Twenty minutes later, the smaller crisis room filled.
Dayo arrived with Luna beside him. He had expected exhaustion after the hold, not another fire. The look on Alice’s face told him this one had not been scheduled by anyone sensible.
Sharon placed the trend map on the main screen.
Dayo read the phrases.
Audit the Streams.
Respect Real Fans.
JD Fans Are Scared.
MM Spikes.
Twenty Billion Truth.
His expression did not change, but Luna noticed the way his fingers tightened once at his side.
Alice spoke first. "The petition is forming now. It started with fans asking for Spotify and other platforms to review the fourteen-day window. The professional version includes Beautiful Things, After Midnight, and Eclipse Crown’s comeback single."
Wayne blinked. "They included us?"
Sharon nodded. "Some of the smarter fans did it intentionally. They believe including Beautiful Things makes the petition harder to dismiss as jealousy."
Wayne leaned back. "Smart and terrifying are cousins."
Mara brought up the fan spreadsheet that had escaped the forum. "The numbers they are sharing are mostly correct. First week, 12.81B. Second week, 7.96B. Fourteen-day total, 20.77B. The daily breakdown is close enough to our internal reporting that I would assume someone compiled it from platform estimates and partner leaks."
Alice looked at her. "Are the suspicions reasonable?"
Mara hesitated.
Dayo noticed.
"Say it plainly," he said.
Mara turned back to the screen. "Some of the public patterns are strange. Cassian’s U.S. and Canada spikes were unusually sharp during the same two windows. Eclipse Crown’s core Korean and Japanese fandom activity looks real, but some international streaming clusters outside those core regions do not match visible engagement. That does not prove bots. It does justify questions."
Felix had been quiet at the end of the table.
Dayo looked at him. "And what do you see?"
Felix opened his laptop. "More than public fans can see, less than what we can prove."
Alice’s eyes narrowed. "Explain."
Felix brought up a diagram without names, using color-coded vendor paths and time stamps. "Since the shadow-boss infrastructure went quiet, I have only partial sightlines. Michael and Silas stopped using the old system directly for sensitive conversations, but they still leave traces when their people touch familiar vendor routes. PR distribution paths, consulting layers, playlist advisory firms, shell contracts, timing habits. Think of it like seeing footprints after someone stepped off the main road. I do not see every movement, but I can tell when the same shoes keep appearing near different doors."
Dayo listened carefully.
Felix continued, "The fatigue language moved through several routes I already flagged. Some promotional vendors tied to those routes also appear near the Cassian and Eclipse Crown amplification windows. Publicly, that means nothing yet. Privately, it tells me the fans stumbled close to something real."
Luna looked from Felix to Dayo. "So they are not completely imagining it."
"No," Felix said. "They are also behaving badly in places, which makes the useful part harder to defend."
That was the problem.
Dayo stared at the screen where fans were now filling Cassian’s comments with bot accusations. Another panel showed Eclipse Crown fans pushing back furiously. Some JD fans had already started blaming Korean fans broadly, which made Dayo’s face darken.
"Draft a statement," he said.
Alice was already typing. "Position?"
"We welcome verification. We do not accuse artists without evidence. We do not support harassment. Records should stand on clean numbers, but artists should not be abused because fans are angry."
Sharon wrote it down quickly.
Wayne looked toward Dayo. "Do you want to post personally?"
"No."
Alice paused. "Why?"
"If I post now, half the internet will read it as me sending fans to war or begging them to stop after benefiting from them. The company statement should come first. If I need to speak later, I will."
Ulrich nodded from the side. "Correct."
The statement went out forty minutes later.
JD Records supports transparent platform verification for all major campaigns, including our own. We do not endorse harassment, targeted abuse, or accusations made without evidence. Records should stand on verified data, and artists should not be attacked because fans are angry.
It helped, but only partially.
The careful fans shared it as proof that JD Records had nothing to hide. The angry fans ignored the warning and kept pushing the hashtag. Cassian and Eclipse Crown fans mocked the statement, saying JD Records wanted to look mature after its own fandom had thrown the first stone.
The petition crossed one million signatures before evening.
By then, it had changed language.
The final public version requested an independent anti-bot and abnormal-traffic review of the fourteen-day global campaign window across all major participating platforms. It named Beautiful Things, After Midnight, and Eclipse Crown’s comeback single. It also requested that platforms distinguish between organized fandom activity, third-party artificial streaming, playlist manipulation, and invalid traffic generated outside artist control.
That wording made journalists take it seriously.
Entertainment sites picked up the story first. Then music-business newsletters. Then tech reporters, because bot-streaming audits touched platform trust. By night, the question was no longer only whether Cassian or Eclipse Crown had been inflated. The question became whether the largest two-week streaming race in modern music could be trusted without public verification.
Michael Erickson watched the petition number rise from his office and did not touch his drink.
This was not how the pressure campaign was supposed to turn.
Cassian’s song was real. Eclipse Crown’s fandom was real. That had been the point. Real support could hide artificial pressure better than a fake campaign ever could. Vendors could amplify edges, push certain windows, strengthen weak regions, and create the impression of a rival surge without making the artists themselves look fraudulent.
But fan anger had a way of kicking the wrong stone and exposing the tunnel underneath.
Michael opened a secure chat with one of MM Label’s senior promotion managers.
Tell every vendor to preserve nothing unnecessary. Move all discretionary records to standard retention schedules. Do not write the word bot anywhere.
The reply came fast.
Platform review is only fan noise for now.
Michael stared at the message until his jaw tightened.
Then he typed:
Fan noise becomes platform policy when the crowd is large enough. Move now.
Across London, Silas received a shorter update.
He read the petition language twice.
The inclusion of Beautiful Things interested him. It made the demand harder to dismiss. JD fans had accidentally protected their own accusation by placing Dayo under the same light as everyone else.
Silas did not panic.
He began cutting exposed threads.
One consulting route was closed. Another was paused. A playlist advisory contact was instructed to stop all direct communication until further notice. A regional amplification vendor in Eastern Europe received a bland compliance notice that would mean nothing to an outsider and everything to someone who understood the structure.
Felix saw two of the cutoffs before midnight.
He did not have complete access. Those days were gone. Michael had tightened too much, and Silas had never trusted systems he did not personally understand. But some old routes still brushed against the architecture Michael built years ago, and Felix had been patient enough to watch the shadows instead of chasing the men.
He sent Dayo a short update.
They are cutting vendor paths. The fan storm touched something.
Dayo read the message in his office.
Luna sat on the couch with her notebook open, but she was not writing. The EP waited again. Everything waited again.
Dayo placed the phone on the desk and looked at the statement JD Records had released.
He did not feel satisfied.
Fans had defended him and made things worse in the same breath. Some were right to ask questions. Some were wrong in how they asked. Some were scared now because the petition they had celebrated was about to place Beautiful Things under the same inspection.
By 12:08 a.m., Spotify moved first.
Not alone.
The statement came through Spotify’s music integrity account, then was echoed by several partner platforms and industry verification bodies within the hour.
Due to widespread public concern, abnormal traffic reports, and the unprecedented scale of the recent global campaign window, we are initiating an expanded anti-bot and abnormal-streaming review for the fourteen-day period covering major releases involved in the global No. 1 race. This review is not an accusation against any artist or fandom. It is a verification process designed to protect chart integrity and distinguish legitimate fandom activity from invalid traffic.
The statement named the songs.
Beautiful Things — Dayo
After Midnight — Cassian Vale
Eclipse Crown — comeback single
For the first few seconds after the statement posted, JD fans celebrated.
Then the second meaning arrived.
Their demand had worked, but it had not only aimed outward.
The biggest song in the world was now under review too.
Inside JD Records, Alice read the platform statement on the main screen, then turned to Dayo. Mara looked tense. Sharon’s phone was vibrating nonstop. Wayne whispered something unrepeatable under his breath. Felix watched the vendor tracker more than the platform announcement.
Luna looked at Dayo.
He did not panic.
He did not smile either.
"Then we let the numbers be checked," he said.
Outside, the hashtag that had started as an accusation against everyone else placed all three songs beneath the same light, and by morning, the whole world would be waiting to see which numbers survived it.
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