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Deezer says its “cutting-edge tools” will tackle streaming fraud and flag AI-generated music

By | Published on Wednesday 7 June 2023

Deezer

Responding to the increased chatter of late about fraud on the streaming services – and mounting concerns about the digital platforms being swamped with AI-generated music – good old Deezer has been talking up the “cutting-edge tools” it is developing that will, and I quote, “ensure that the future of music streaming is transparent and fair”.

The need to combat fraud on streaming services has been on the agenda for years, of course. We all know that scammers create and upload their own generic tracks, perhaps using music-making AI to help with the process, and then set up a room full of computers listening to those tracks on premium streaming accounts.

Because of the way the current streaming model works, those people can pull more out of the system in terms of royalties than they put in when buying their premium subscriptions.

But there are other scams too. Others upload existing music that they don’t own – usually meddling with the tracks in some way in a bid to avoid audio ID detection – or they upload tracks with deliberately misleading metadata, and then get streams from genuine subscribers allowing them to pull money out of the system. So they are profiting through misrepresentation or just outright copyright infringement.

Then there’s AI-generated music. The music industry is adamant that if you train an AI tool with existing music in order to create new music then a licence is required from whoever controls the rights in the existing recordings and songs. If the vocals in the AI-generated tracks imitate known artists, they are possibly also exploiting the publicity rights of those artists and further permission is required. But who, exactly, is ensuring any of that is happening?

Deezer and its magical machines, that’s who. Because when technology creates a problem, technology can probably fix it. “With over 100,000 new tracks uploaded per day to our platform, it’s becoming increasingly important to prioritise quality over quantity and defend real artists that create truly valuable content”, says top Deezer geezer Jeronimo Folgueira.

“As a leading streaming platform, Deezer has a responsibility to create a fair and transparent environment for music consumption”, he goes on. “Our goal is to weed out illegal and fraudulent content, increase transparency, and develop a new remuneration system where professional artists are rewarded for creating valuable content”.

Deezer, of course, is one of the streaming services working with Universal Music on its grand plan to change the way that streaming monies are shared out across the industry each month, into what the major’s boss Lucian Grainge likes to call an “artist-centric model”.

Quite what that means remains unclear, though Folgueira confirms “we have embraced the discussion around a new artist-centric model”, before confirming that his company is “also developing tools to detect AI-generated content”.

But what does that mean? Well, an official explainer states: “By detecting AI-generated content on its platform, Deezer aims to develop a system for tagging music that has been created by generative AI, starting with songs using synthetic voices of existing artists”.

“The tags will be used to keep artists, labels, and users informed of what’s ‘real’ or AI-generated on the platform, reduce fraudulent activity, and ultimately develop a remuneration model that distinguishes between different types of music creation”.

“Deezer’s toolset will leverage years of research on audio AI and content identification”, it goes on, “starting with the company’s proprietary ‘radar’ technology”.

“’Radar’ can scan large catalogues of music”, it then explains, “identifying any song even when the signal is distorted, tempo changed, etc, and is the foundation for Deezer’s current fraudulent content detection. ‘Radar’ is one of many unique solutions Deezer offers to external parties as part of its tech services proposition”.

Adds your main man Folgueira: “AI can be used to create new incredible content and I believe there are massive benefits of using generative AI, but we need to ensure it’s done in a responsible way. There’s an opportunity now to get things right from the start of the AI revolution, and not make the same mistakes as the social media giants did when fake news started to flood their platforms. We owe it to the artists and the fans”.

So that’s all good, isn’t it? I think we all want streaming fraud to be stopped and transparency around AI-generated music to be ensured. And as for the legit artists and creators who are now getting caught up in and blocked out by all this ramped-up rights management activity? Well, let’s worry about them another day.



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