“Streaming fraud” is the latest variant of making money off musicians backs. Music is to cheap to get hold of and feed the big-data models the AI-factories copies and generate rehashed and mashed up “music” from to make money on. Well here we go according to Financial Times today:
Spotify ejects thousands of AI-made songs in purge of fake streams. This amounts to about 7% of the tracks uploaded by AI music startup Boomy. Platform cracks down on bots posing as listeners as flood of content rattles music industry. Ultimately, the Boomy songs were removed due to the suspected “artificial streaming” of bots posing as listeners, Spotify commented.
And the concerning bit:
“ A recent French study found that between **1%**and 3% of all music streamed in France is fraudulent. If those numbers are similar worldwide, it suggests that artificial streaming amounts to theft worth between USD $175 million and $525 million annually. This is based on IFPI’s report that streaming was worth $17.5 billion in wholesale industry revenues worldwide in 2022.
However, it’s not known how much artificial streaming is detectable. Streaming fraud monitoring firm Beatdapp has suggested that the share of streams that are fraudulent is closer to 10% of all streams – in which case the fraud is worth closer to $1.75 billionannually.”