“Everyone is a loser,” says Georges Fornay, deputy executive director of Qobuz on the Tech&Co platform, in reaction to the publication of the study by the National Music Center which estimates that there would be between 1 and 3 billion false listeners on France in 2021. The French listening platform Qobuz participated in the report.
Qobuz is committed to musical and sound quality. On its platform, Qobuz detected 1.6% of false wiretaps. “We don’t detect all fraud because it’s very complex,” confesses Georges Fornay. But by relying on data and statistics, the platform is able to detect unusual behavior “and that is what worries us.”
This detection is possible because Qobuz reports everything that happens on its platform. To understand the mechanism of fraud, you need to look at the music streaming ecosystem. “Each “cost more than 30 seconds generates income donated to rights holders or record companies”, explains the director. It is the latter that pay artists according to a well-defined percentage.
According to Georges Fornay, this “fraud phenomenon” can be explained in several ways: it can come from “people who want to make money”, from “fake tags created by aggregators” to generate real business, or from people who want to increase the visibility of certain artists. mentioning them in the recommendation algorithms.
well designed systems
He also notes that “these bogus broadcasts are costing us money.” In fact, if the activity is false, it does not contribute anything to the platform because it does not generate new subscriptions.
To establish the study, it was with the help of tools that the platforms were able to detect these false listenings, for example through unusual behavior such as very long transmission times or pieces played in accelerated mode.
Fraudsters set up elaborate systems with networked computers running titles in a loop, often using fake accounts opened with expired or stolen credit cards. They also use viruses to take control of a computer and wiretap or organize cyberattacks on real accounts.
Source: BFM TV
