What would happen if the artists were not as successful as they claim to be? A report from the National Music Center (CNM), commissioned by the Minister of Culture Roselyne Bachelot in 2021 and consulted by the parisianreveals that a massive scam is plaguing the streaming industry and that a significant portion of online listening is actually fake listening.
This 57-page document was produced in collaboration with three streaming platforms, namely Deezer, Spotify, and Qobuz. The result of a year and a half investigation, has just been revealed to some forty representatives of the recording industry and reveals one to three billion false listeners during the year 2021 (over 100 billion songs listened to each year). in France).
“A fraud that distorts the remuneration of artists”
The three companies, which are fighting these scams, revealed to the ministry the number of fake streams they detected on their platforms: in 2021, these rose to 2.6% on Deezer, 1.1% on Spotify and 1.6% in Qobuz. And the practice played out the following year, as the figure rose to 5% in 2022 on Deezer.
“As far as we know, it is the first time in the world that an official study shows that there is fraud in streaming,” underlines the president of the CNM, Jean-Philippe Thiellay, who qualifies, however, recalling that “we are far from 10% of the that we have often heard of.
Philippe Thiellay considers this “massive” fraud “worrying”, especially since it “distorts the remuneration of artists”. Finally, he laments that “not everyone played the game, given the high stakes.” “Amazon Music gave us 2022 numbers and Apple Music and YouTube didn’t participate at all.”
The most popular artists not the most concerned
Finally, the investigation shows that this fraud is carried out on the Internet by real sellers of fake streams, who are difficult to convict and, therefore, to close. the parisian describes “dozens of networked computers running titles in a loop on fake accounts opened with expired or stolen credit cards.” Viruses would also be used to take over computers and release songs on the platforms to inflate the numbers.
The National Music Center also ensures that the false listening detected did not affect the most popular artists, contrary to what one might think. In the top 10 most listened to songs, only 0.25% of the plays would be fake on Spotify and 0.65% on Deezer.
Source: BFM TV
