A German court has issued an injunction ordering stream manipulation service Pimpyourfollower to stop selling products that allow users to purchase artificial plays, views, likes and followers on platforms including Spotify, SoundCloud and YouTube.
It is the latest court order secured as a result of legal action by the record industry in Germany. Although this time the court also found that the targeted stream manipulation service is liable for damages, which is a global first that could prove to be a useful deterrent if the labels follow up with warning letters to other similar services.
CEO of German record industry trade group BVMI, Florian Drücke, says: “Streaming manipulation is unacceptable because it distorts competition to the detriment of artists and those who invest in them”. Noting that it also damages the reliability of the music charts, he adds, “ultimately, it undermines the credibility of the digital market".
Streaming fraud is a multi-layered problem, with various parties pursuing various methods to artificially boost the number of plays of specific tracks on platforms like Spotify, sometimes to make artists and tracks appear more popular than they really are, sometimes to claim a bigger share of streaming royalties, and sometimes both.
As a result, a multi-layered approach is required to crack down on the fraud. Part of that approach involves going after websites like that run by Pimpyourfollower.de, which openly sell stream manipulation services to artists, labels and other interested parties.
The Pimpyourfollower domain currently forwards to a service called RatingHero24, seemingly owned by the same company, which has also used the names SocialBooster24 and Likefame. RatingHero24 declares that “the influencer’' secret tool” is “now available to you”.
Users can buy streams on Spotify starting at €4.99 for a 1000 plays. There’s also a special package currently priced at €99.99 that promises 25,000 streams, 12,500 followers and 7500 monthly listeners, also guaranteeing that all that manipulation will be “100% safe and discreet”.
Record labels can go after these services directly through the courts, with the precise legal grounds varying from country to country. Or they could go after the e-commerce platforms and payment providers the services use, with RatingHero24 stating that it is “powered by Shopify”.
The record companies in Brazil and Germany have been particularly prolific in targeting these services through the courts. Since 2020, BVMI has obtained injunctions against six different stream manipulation services and last year managed to force SP-Onlinepromotion.com offline with a simple warning letter.
Drücke continues, “BVMI and its member labels have been successfully taking legal action against manipulation services for years in order to consistently curb distortions in the streaming business. For this reason, we recently launched our streaming anomaly detection approach together with GfK and the Vienna University Of Economics And Business as an additional element”.
BVMI works with the International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry on this work. Its CEO Victoria Oakley adds, “There is no place for streaming manipulation in the music industry. It’s a fraudulent practice and those who engage in it, or support it, should not be allowed to divert revenue away from creators or distort music fans’ experience of listening to and supporting artists”.
“We continue to work on behalf of our member record labels to prevent this activity and hope that this new success in Germany sends a clear message to those who continue to offer these damaging services”.