Fraud groups take billions of dollars a year out of the music industry through fake streams, a streaming technology company has warned. At least 10% of all song streams are fraudulent, and this takes between $2bn and $3bn out of the global music industry each year according to Beatdapp, the streaming fraud detection platform. Global streaming jumped by a third last year with 7.
'No one notices that a few pennies are going to this song and a few pennies are going to that song but, in aggregate, they can steal billions of dollars,' they said. 'That money would have gone to real artists that would have been used to pay out managers and agents and lawyers, labels, distributors. But instead it's syphoned off and it goes to professional scammers who are just stealing from the industry.