‘Artists are the victims’ – How scammers are stealing billions from music industry

Fraudsters are using click farms and AI music to make ‘significant’ sums of money off streaming giants like Spotify.

Newstalk Tech Correspondent Jess Kelly said the scam is becoming more and more common – with around 10% of all streams now believed to be fraudulent.

She warned that smaller artists are the ones losing out to the scam, with the click farms cutting into the attention they might otherwise get.

On Newstalk Breakfast she explained the “very clever” scam.

“Fraudsters are creating music with AI, uploading it to streaming platforms, playing it on repeated streams and then taking the revenue,” she said. 

“We know that the streaming services don’t pay a huge amount of money to artists for one play. 

“You might get US $0.001 but if you’re getting millions of streams, that’s when you start to make money.” 

There are a number of platforms that allow you to create music in a short amount of time. 

The music does not have to be of high quality, with fraudsters able to make a significant amount of money if they can get it played on repeat.

“New research has shown that around 10% of all streams on streaming services are fraudulent,” Jess said.  

Artists are the ‘victim’

The scam is similar to so-called ‘click farms’, in which companies use bots to increase the number of page views for their website. 

“This is like a new, more modern version of that,” Jess said. 

“It does work and we are seeing it more and more. 

“Unfortunately, there is a victim here and that is the smaller artists who are not getting the same level of attention on these platforms.” 

Streaming companies are looking to crack down on the phenomenon but Jess said it will be difficult for them to do so.

“They’re looking to try and introduce measures to verify artists on the platform,” he said. 

“That is a very difficult thing to do if you think of all the artists in the world. 

“But it’s a good thing that they’re aware of it now and there may be extra verifications.” 

In the past three years, YouTube has paid out $70 billion (€64.6 billion) in fees to content creators.

Main image: Musicians playing guitars busking in city centre on Grafton Street. Image by: Pearl Bucknall / Alamy Stock Photo)