(Hype Bot) – As music fraud continues to increase, here’s what industry professionals are doing at the publisher level to combat it.
go through Jorge Brea symphony blog
With more than 125,000 tracks uploaded to music services every day, various forms of streaming fraud have increasingly become one of the most important topics in the modern music industry. With the widespread adoption of music streaming, the proliferation of DIY artists, and the democratization of distribution where virtually anyone can upload music to a DSP, we’ve seen a corresponding increase in music fraud – to the tune of 5-10%. Streaming media. Here are the steps we are taking as a dealer.
Let’s talk about fraud…
Whether this fraud occurs through stream farms, account hacking and impersonation, music leaks, track manipulation, or dozens of other techniques, fraudsters are using publishers and DSPs to divert royalties from rights holders. and transferred from the hands of artists to their pockets, to copyright owners and artists. The problem is complex and requires not only highly detailed detection, but also resolution and prevention. However, this is not just an issue for industry stakeholders. We all – labels, publishers, DSPs and distributors – need to work together to solve this problem. As someone who is passionate about this issue, I went to the team at Symphonic Distribution and my peers at other distribution companies to discuss how we could combat this problem to the best of our ability.
know your customer
At Symphonic, when we noticed an increase in fraud, we first turned our focus to KYC (Know Your Customer) efforts. We supported many departments, including legal and data intelligence, and developed new rules with payment providers. But it turns out that nothing works as well as authentication. We made a conscious decision at Symphonic – based on a template established by music publisher Too Lost – to ensure that anyone who does business with us is a verifiable human being. We work with IDenfy, an identity verification company, to complete biometric scans of potential new customers’ driver’s licenses, passports or other forms of photo identification, as well as selfies.
None of these profiles enter Symphonic’s systems – we only receive results from iDenfy. If they don’t check out, we’ll review their account and provide additional verification attempts. If we still cannot verify their personal identity, we will terminate their account (or accounts).
Since implementing this process, streaming fraud on Symphonic has been reduced by over 50% (monthly signups) and additional steps have been taken to achieve additional improvements.
We liken this identity verification system to the club’s bodyguard.
They check ID, compare photos, make sure there are no issues, maybe ask a few questions, and if there are any red flags, we ask for another approach before rejecting someone. This does two things for us:
- It protects the security of our users and their copyrights.
- It allows us to identify fraudsters at a low level and flag them so they can’t use our platform again.
This type of verification is a game changer for all dealers because we know that most scam accounts originate from the same entities and many of the same locations. These steps allow us to identify multiple accounts tied to the same verification information, allowing us to immediately ban all accounts and prevent bad actors from being verified again in the future.
Symphonic is committed to serving our customers, we are committed to cleaning data, we are committed to building a better music industry, and most importantly, this does not change our mission. Any “real” person can still upload their music and reach the world with their message. It takes a few steps, but it ensures that their songs don’t get caught up in competition with fakes and scams.
“Creating friction for current or potential users is frowned upon…”
For many other dealers and others in the DIY/indie space, creating friction for current or potential users is unpopular – they feel it will scare away business and reduce their revenue. But as long as entry points to streaming services can be easily bypassed, scams will continue to exist, and they won’t get any easier to deal with. The cost of weeding out bad actors is higher than keeping the stage clean in the first place. In fact, we’ve found that this approach is almost universally accepted by Symphonic users because it makes them feel safer with us. We need to establish such recognition thresholds and cultivate better industries.
In addition to identity verification, there are many other ways and places for distributors to detect and prevent fraud, including using data to identify suspicious patterns, proactively maintaining data quality, and working with DSPs to collect all the information needed to identify their fraudulent behavior. , communicate and educate artists, and more. Detecting and stopping fraud is always evolving—and sadly, as long as there are ways to make money, there will be people trying to figure out new ways to steal it. However, one of the most important things you can do is use new business to review and inform your existing business. There’s no better place to learn than your own customers.
After all…
One person or one company cannot solve this problem. We all need to work together, and it all starts with knowing your business, knowing your customers, being proactive and demanding the information you need to make it happen. There are no magic bullets, but we can do everything we can to try to prevent fraud from occurring in the first place.
