A plethora of music distributors - including DIY distributors like Ditto, RouteNote and Symphonic, plus the distribution business of all three major record companies - are backing a new scheme called the Streaming Integrity Initiative, described as “a new industry commitment to combat streaming fraud and protect artists, songwriters and fans from its harm”.
The initiative was announced earlier today by the International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry, whose CEO Victoria Oakley says, “streaming fraud misleads fans and deprives legitimate artists and songwriters of income that should rightfully flow to them - this is theft, plain and simple”.
Therefore, “we welcome the leadership shown by the first distributors to publicly support the Streaming Integrity Initiative, and hope this leads to direct, effective and coordinated action to protect artists, songwriters and fans from streaming fraud”.
A long list of major and independent music distributors are participating in the new initiative from launch, though there are also some notable omissions. That includes one of the biggest independent distributors overall, Believe and its TuneCore platform, and one of the biggest DIY distributors, DistroKid.
But organisers of the Streaming Integrity Initiative are calling on other distributors, as well as streaming services and music industry organisations, to back the new scheme.
To participate in the initiative, distributors need to make five key commitments. First, to have robust systems for verifying customers and rights ownership. Second, to vet content to identify infringement, fraudulent activity and AI-related risks. Third, to detect, investigate and mitigate suspected fraud.
Fourth, to share intelligence with rivals to prevent bad actors simply moving from one distributor to another. And fifth, to measure and continuously strengthen anti-fraud systems to address evolving threats.
Another distributor backing the scheme is Absolute Label Services, whose Managing Director Simon Wills says, “combatting artificial streaming cannot be a reactive game of whack-a-mole, it demands intelligent, forward-looking technology paired with cross-industry collaboration”.
Bigging up his own company’s work in this area, he says that, “by integrating deep, multi-signal fraud detection into our music OS, Anthology”, Absolute is “enabling rightsholders to identify potential irregularities early”. Which means “we fully support IFPI’s Streaming Integrity Initiative and are proud to champion a cleaner, fairer digital ecosystem for all artists and rightsholders”.
Streaming fraud is a multi-layered problem. It usually involves artificially boosting the streams of any one track so that it appears more successful than it really is and gets a bigger portion of the fixed streaming royalty pool that it would otherwise be due. There are different reasons why someone might employ stream manipulation in this way, with bad actors being found both within and outside the music industry.
Then you have people who simply upload other people’s music in the hope they can grab royalties from the streaming of their specific files before anyone notices. And now you have people uploading AI-generated tracks that claim to be by existing artists, in the hope fans will be tricked into streaming them in the belief their favourite artist has released something new.
Addressing the fraud also requires a multi-layered approach, including streaming services tracking and dealing with suspicious streams, and the industry at large going after online platforms that sell stream manipulation as a service. But everyone agrees distributors have an important role to play too, not least by implementing more rigorous ‘know your customer’ requirements when people sign up for the first time.
There have been various initiatives seeking to tackle streaming fraud in the past, including the Music Fights Fraud Alliance, which does include Believe and DistroKid in its membership. It’s not clear what the relationship is between the Music Fights Fraud Alliance and the new IFPI-led scheme.
Companies participating in the Streaming Integrity Initiative at launch include Absolute Label Services, CmdShft, Ditto Music, GoDigital, HYBE, IDOL, InnerCat Music Group, Redeye, RouteNote, Secretly Distribution, Symphonic and Too Lost.
Alongside that lot are Sony Music and its distributors AWAL and The Orchard, Universal Music and its distributors CD Baby, FUGA and the Virgin Music Group, and Warner Music and its recently acquired Revelator business. Pan-European indie label trade group IMPALA and indie label digital licensing agency Merlin are also supporters.