Estimates suggest that at least 10% of all streaming activity is fake. As a result, rightsholders lose billions of dollars that might be misallocated to fraudsters and artists are often left unaware until their music is removed from digital streaming platforms like Spotify or Apple Music. To help artists identify and combat artificial streaming of their music, Global music distribution and artist services company, Amuse, has introduced a new feature, Stream Check. The feature provides artists with a visual indicator of the health of their streaming data, allowing them to understand and address potential fraudulent activities.
Erik Söderblom, Amuse's Interim Chief Product Officer, said in a press release: "While there are plenty of bad actors who systemize streaming fraud, artificial streaming can also happen to artists who haven’t done anything at all. An artist may cluelessly use a third-party promotion partner who turns out to be a bad choice, or legitimate tracks are added to a third-party playlist that utilizes bots without artists knowing, but the artist faces the penalties."
Stream Check features a colour-coded health bar that shows the proportion of an artist's streams deemed artificial by Spotify over the past month. A green bar indicates no artificial streams, while orange or red bars signal potential fraud and the risk of penalties or removal from DSPs.
"As a particularly data-focused company, Amuse has spent years building an internal system to prevent streaming fraud and collecting monthly Spotify Withheld Streams reports," Louise Frodsham, Director of Customer Operations at Amuse said in a press release. "Thanks to all of this groundwork, we developed the Stream Check feature in a matter of weeks. We are thrilled to unveil this feature to all artists who distribute their music through Amuse, and we look forward to continuing to educate and surface data that empowers them to fight this industry-wide problem."
