Streaming Fraud
Artificial inflation of streaming numbers through bot farms, fake accounts, or manipulation schemes to increase royalties.
Definition
Streaming fraud encompasses various schemes to artificially inflate play counts on music platforms. This includes bot farms that generate fake streams, click farms using real devices, looped silent tracks, playlist manipulation, and coordinated fake listening networks.
Platforms combat fraud through detection algorithms and auditing, withholding royalties from suspected fraudulent streams. Fraudulent activity can result in content removal and legal action.
Why It Matters
Fraud distorts the streaming economy, stealing royalties from legitimate artists. It also corrupts chart positions and discovery algorithms, disadvantaging honest creators.
Artists should understand fraud to avoid both participating in schemes and being victimized by services promising fake streams.
Examples in Practice
A promotion service guarantees 100,000 streams for $500, using bot farms—the streams get flagged, the song is removed, and the artist loses their account.
An artist notices their streams come predominantly from countries where they've never promoted, indicating their distributor may be engaged in fraud.
A platform withholds royalty payments pending investigation after detecting unusual listening patterns on an artist's catalog.