Streaming-Betrug: Now the distributors have to clean up their act - and that could also affect honest musicians
Anyone who publishes their own music, got used to a pretty comfortable routine. Finish song, Upload cover, Enter ISRC and metadata, Select a release date and let the distributor do the rest. A few days later the record was on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, YouTube Music and elsewhere. This development was a blessing for independent musicians. Today you no longer have to go to a sales office or hope for it, that some label finds their own record important enough, to even get them into stores.
Unfortunately, the same infrastructure also works wonderfully, if you don't release music, but wants to cheat the streaming system.
That's exactly why the IFPI... 14. September 2026 die Streaming Integrity Initiative, kurz SII, presented. There is initially no new authority or new law behind this. These are common standards, to which distributors and other companies from the music industry should commit themselves. Supporters at the launch included CD Baby, Ditto Music, RouteNote, BEGINNING, Symphonic, The Orchard, Too Lost, LEAK, Sony Music Group, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Merlin and IMPALA.
The complete initiative can be found here:
https://endstreamingfraud.com/streaming-integrity-initiative
The official communication from the IFPI:
On paper, this all sounds pretty reasonable. Distributors should know their customers better, Check rights, Detect suspicious uploads, Respond to fraud and share information about known fraudsters. Anyone who uploads their own music and doesn't buy their streams from some windy "100,000 Spotify plays guaranteed" place, could say now: wonderful, doesn't concern me.
Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple.
Because the initiative shows quite clearly, where digital music distribution is currently heading. The distributor should no longer be primarily the pipe, through which a finished recording reaches the streaming services. He is increasingly expected to become a bouncer.
And bouncers make mistakes.
The open door of the music industry
That distributors, of all people, should be held more accountable, is logical. Anyone who wants to commit streaming fraud, first has to get his music into the system somewhere. Spotify doesn't just accept any WAV file, because someone asks nicely. Normally the route goes through a distributor or aggregator.
The IFPI therefore describes distributors as an important access point to the digital music ecosystem. You can intervene there, before the damage occurs.
This is actually smarter, than only counting incorrect streams afterwards.
The problem has changed again thanks to generative AI. In the past, someone had to, who wanted to upload a huge catalog of worthless tracks, at least make these tracks somehow. You could buy cheap production music, Copy files, manipulate existing recordings or do other nonsense. However, the effort wasn't entirely free.
Today this part can also be automated.
A generative music system doesn't need a lunch break, no vacation and doesn't discuss it, whether the snare should be two decibels quieter. Those who do not consider such systems as a creative tool, but used as a content factory, can produce quantities, which no longer have anything to do with a normal human release cycle.
This means that two developments come together, which in themselves are completely different things: extremely easy distribution and extremely easy music production.
The third component is artificial streaming.
Then a music store quickly becomes a calculation problem.
Create tracks automatically, distribute automatically, then create artificial plays and hope, that more royalty money comes out in the end, than it costs to operate the system.
This has about as much to do with music as email spam has to do with pen pals.
The IFPI therefore wants to start with the account
The first point of the new initiative is called “Verify”. What is essentially meant is this, what banks and financial services have known for years as Know Your Customer. A distributor should check, who is behind a customer account and whether this customer appears legitimate.
For normal musicians, this initially sounds like additional paperwork. In many cases it will probably be exactly that.
Nevertheless, I can live relatively well with this part.
Anyone who earns money via a platform and can upload thousands of publications there, does not necessarily have to be allowed to remain completely anonymous. Operators of larger fraud networks in particular benefit from this, if you can simply open the next account after a ban.
The crucial thing, however, is proportionality.
An independent musician is not a bank. A small label is not a multinational corporation. If KYC means at the end, to confirm your identity properly and then have peace of mind, okay. If it turns into a bureaucratic monster, in which some documents are required again before each release, we gained little.
Automated wrong decisions are even more unpleasant. Anyone who has ever tried, to reach a real person in support at a large internet company, roughly knows, where the problem lies. An algorithm can flag an account within a second. The subsequent explanation, that the algorithm has built nonsense, can take weeks.
With a normal social media account, this is annoying. For a distributor, publications and income may depend on this.
Therefore, with every new control option there should also be a reasonable possibility of objection. This part is surprisingly often forgotten in discussions about fraud detection.
Things get really exciting with the uploads
The second major area of the initiative is called “Vet”. This is about the content itself.
According to the initiative's ideas, distributors should check, among other things, metadata and lyrics, Use audio recognition and compare relevant databases. In addition, AI-generated content and possible violations of voice are expressly excluded, Name, called image and identity of an artist.
This is a much bigger step than an ID check.
Anyone who uploads a track in the future, could therefore increasingly expect this, that this track is examined automatically. Similarities to existing recordings, problematic metadata, Suspicious artist names or possible voice clones can play a role.
For obvious fakes, this is a good thing.
If someone uploads a song tomorrow as a “new unreleased Rihanna single.”, although Rihanna has nothing to do with it at all, I don't need a philosophical debate about internet freedom. Get rid of it.
The same goes for people, who slightly modify existing recordings and republish them under a different name. Stories like this existed long before Suno and generative AI.
However, AI makes the matter much more complicated.
Because what exactly is an AI-generated song??
Let's take a producer, who loads his own melody into a generative system and has a string idea generated from it. He then takes four seconds of it, cuts them apart, pitches the material, plays new drums over it, records a bass and has a real singer sing the vocals.
Is that AI music??
Most musicians would probably say: AI was used in production.
Now let's take someone, which enters a text prompt, have a complete finished song created and upload exactly this file unchanged to the distributor.
This is a clearly different case.
There are around a thousand variants in between.
A simple box “AI: yes/no” doesn’t do this stuff justice in the long run.
The IFPI itself has in July 2026 already published principles for AI-influenced music in official charts. A distinction is made there between human-led creative work and purely synthetic or problematically produced works. For chart approval, among other things, a legitimate AI application should be used, a substantial human contribution and the absence of manipulation problems may be relevant.
Those:
You can already see that, where the journey is going. The industry doesn't just try, to ban everything with AI. She tries to build categories.
This is more sensible than a blanket ban. Whether these categories can be reliably recognized technically, is on another page.
An algorithm doesn't know, why a song sounds like that
That's one of my biggest stomach ache in the whole story.
Audio detection works great, if you are looking for a specific recording. Shazam is the obvious everyday example. Fingerprinting systems can also identify known recordings very reliably.
However, it is not so easy to read a creative origin story from a WAV file.
Hip hop is actually the perfect example of this. Two producers can sample the same old record and build completely different beats from it. Someone can legally license a sample, while another uses the same place without permission. The audio files do not tell the recognition system automatically, who has what rights.
With AI, this problem becomes even greater.
When a system believes, to recognize a synthetic voice, That doesn't mean it yet, that there has been a violation of the law. Perhaps the artist's own voice was used. Maybe a license exists. Maybe it's not a synthetic voice at all.
Who introduces such systems, therefore necessarily requires a second step.
Computer says no cannot become the final authority of a music industry, which at the same time claims, to want to protect human creativity.
However, streaming fraud is not an invented problem
Despite all the skepticism towards automated controls, one should not exaggerate in the other direction. Streaming fraud is real and it hurts real musicians.
The IFPI describes the principle quite simply: Fraudsters put music on streaming platforms and then create artificial plays, often via bots. This generates payouts, that are not based on real music consumption.
The organization argues, that this deducts income from a limited royalty system, that would otherwise benefit legitimate rights holders.
The basic problem is understandable.
After all, a bot doesn't buy an additional Spotify subscription for every track played. He manipulates distribution within an existing economic system.
The IFPI now treats streaming fraud as one of the major threats to the streaming business. Im Global Music Report 2026 The organization dedicates its own section to the topic and describes generative AI as an accelerator, because both artificial content and artificial listening can be organized on a larger scale.
The Global Music Report 2026 can be found here:
https://www.ifpi.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/GMR2026_SOTI2.pdf
However, you should keep this in mind, who publishes these figures and assessments. The IFPI represents the interests of the recording industry. That doesn't make their information worthless, but it is not an independent consumer organization.
This is part of clean source work.
More streaming, more money – but not automatically for you
The size of the market explained, why the industry is now reacting so nervously.
According to the Global Music Report 2026 reached worldwide sales of recorded music in the year 2025 around 31,7 billion US dollars. Streaming made 69,6 percent of it; paid subscription streaming alone stood for 52,4 Percent of total sales. The IFPI counted worldwide 837 Millions of paid streaming subscription users.
Those:
This is no longer a niche market. Streaming is the central money maker of recorded music.
The system is correspondingly attractive for fraud.
When billions are distributed somewhere and the distribution works at least partially based on plays, someone will try, To manipulate plays. That's about as surprising as tax fraud in a world with taxes.
More interesting is, how cheap manipulation can become through automation.
If I had to pay a hundred thousand human listeners, to generate a hundred thousand streams, my business model would be pretty stupid.
If software can take over a significant part of it, the calculation looks different.
If the production of the music is also automated, the costs fall even further.
And that brings us back to the combination of generative AI and streaming fraud.
Not every AI song is a scam. This should really be kept clear. A song created with Suno, that ten thousand real people willingly listen to, generates real use. You can talk about art, Training data, Copyright and quality are at odds, but the listeners are still real.
It becomes problematic, when automated production and automated consumption come together.
Then machines hear music from machines, so that a royalty statement is triggered somewhere.
That's a pretty nice caricature of the digital economy.
Repeat offenders should be thrown out completely at some point
The Streaming Integrity Initiative therefore requires more than just testing, but also consequences.
Under “Act” distributors should investigate suspicious activities, Stop confirmed fraud and limit its impact. A system of sanctions is in place for repeated violations. Repeat offenders should be excluded across platforms; In appropriate cases, an immediate ban should also be possible.
Here too, the devil is in the details.
If there is clear fraud, hardly any honest musician would have any compassion. Anyone who orders hundreds of thousands of bot streams and continues under a new name after each ban, don't need to be surprised about the consequences.
But streaming is a strange system. An artist doesn't control every single place, where his song appears.
This becomes particularly problematic with playlists.
There are dubious playlist providers, Fake promotion and services, who advertise with guaranteed streams. Anyone who knowingly buys something like that, plays with fire.
However, it can also happen, that music ends up in strange playlists without any input from the artist. An artist cannot check in person, whether every single one of his 30.000 monthly listener is currently sitting in a real kitchen with a real smartphone.
Therefore the equation cannot be::
unusual streams = fraudulent artist.
There is a pretty big difference between conspicuousness and evidence.
Sharing information is meaningful – and a little scary
The fourth point of the initiative is called “Share”.
Companies should exchange information about fraudulent activities, to the extent this is legally permissible. Everyone understands the idea behind it immediately: A fraudster shouldn't be kicked out of Distributor A and then just start all over again with Distributor B the next morning.
From a technical perspective, this is probably one of the most impactful parts of the initiative.
From a normal musician's point of view, that's the point, where I have the most questions.
What information is shared?
How long are they stored??
What is considered a sufficiently reliable indication of fraud?
Can a musician experience, that he was flagged in such a system?
Can incorrect marking be corrected??
What happens if the name is the same??
How is it prevented?, that a mistaken decision by a company spreads throughout the entire industry?
These are not arguments against sharing information. They are arguments for sensible rules.
When multiple banks share information about proven financial fraud, can that make sense. However, no one wants to suddenly be considered a fraudster at every bank because of a mistake.
The same principle applies here.
A functioning anti-fraud system doesn't just need teeth. It takes a memory, that can correct errors.
DistroKid is standing next to it right now
One detail of the publication immediately stood out.
DistroKid was not on the published list of supporters at the start of the Streaming Integrity Initiative.
That's why this is remarkable, because DistroKid itself claims, approximately 40 percent of all new music worldwide and serve more than four million artists. Music Business Worldwide therefore seized on the company's absence 14. September expressly.
The article:
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/distrokid-new-anti-fraud-standards-unlike-cd-baby/
However, you shouldn't make more of your absence from a supporter list, than she is. It proves neither, that DistroKid fundamentally rejects the standards, nor does it automatically say anything about the quality of the company's existing anti-fraud measures.
The timing was still spectacular.
Just a day later, Universal Music Group sued DistroKid in a US federal court in Delaware.
UMG accuses the distributor, among other things, to have distributed thousands of unauthorized or altered versions of protected recordings. The lawsuit also concerns AI-generated content, which UMG describes as “AI slop”.. According to Reuters, the lawsuit cites material related to artists such as the Beatles, Drake, Lady Gaga und Rihanna.
DistroKid denies the allegations.
Reuters reported on 15. September about it:
At this point you have to put the brakes on journalistically a bit. A lawsuit is not a judgment. UMG makes claims, DistroKid disagrees, and a court will hear the case. Who is already writing now?, DistroKid has been proven to have done all of these things, write more, than we know.
Nevertheless, the legal dispute fits surprisingly well with the new initiative.
The industry is discussing it, how much responsibility a distributor has for this, what passes through its systems into the streaming services. At the same time, this very question ends up in court in a fairly concrete form.
This is worth a separate article about. And not just because of DistroKid.
The outcome can be interesting for the entire DIY distribution.
When the distributor becomes the rights controller
There is a fundamental conflict here.
The enormous strength of modern distributors is this, that they scale.
Millions of artists can upload music, without first having an A&R Manager listens to each recording. This is the reason, why digital distribution has become so cheap.
If distributors have to check every upload more intensively in the future, Efforts and costs inevitably increase.
These costs can be technically reduced, by automating more.
Then we're back to the algorithm.
Or you employ more people.
Then distribution becomes more expensive.
It will probably be a mix of both.
For musicians, this could mean long-term, that the times of completely uncontrolled uploads are coming to an end. I don't believe, that suddenly every single is checked manually by a lawyer. That would be economically absurd.
But risk-based audits are pretty obvious.
An artist with five years of clean release history, Comprehensible metadata and normal streaming patterns are likely to attract less attention than an account opened yesterday, the one today 4.000 Tracks hochlädt.
Actually, that would be a sensible implementation.
Don't treat every musician, like he was a potential criminal.
Look for patterns, which are actually unusual.
For small labels, documentation becomes more important
I would therefore draw a fairly unspectacular practical consequence from the whole thing: Independent artists and small labels should keep their records tidy.
Bought a beat? Keep license.
Feature agreed? Keep agreement.
Sample released? Keep documentation.
Cover art by someone else? Clarify rights.
Multiple artist names or projects? Document cleanly.
Worked with AI? Also hold on, what was done and with what system.
Don't delete project files and stems anyway.
That doesn't sound particularly rock 'n' roll, but is much more pleasant, than having to prove it two years later, why you were allowed to publish something.
You quickly notice this, especially with older releases, how much stuff has disappeared at some point. The beat came via WeTransfer, The producer now has a different email address and some license was on a laptop, the 2024 has given up the ghost.
As long as no one asks, everything is wonderful.
As soon as someone asks, Archeology begins.
A small label should now actually keep a simple rights file for each release. No 80-page legal brief. One folder is enough: Master, Cover, Splits, Beat license, Sample-Clearance, Feature Agreement, Distributor data and, if applicable, information on AI tools used.
This not only protects against distributors. It generally saves trouble.
Support becomes more important than the cheapest annual price
Maybe this will also change the question, according to which musicians choose their distributor.
For years it was all about price, Number of stores, Payout and perhaps additional functions.
When automatic controls increase, suddenly something else becomes interesting: What happens, if something goes wrong?
Can I reach someone??
I get a concrete answer?
Is there an appeal process?
How long does an exam take??
Will income be frozen immediately or only the affected amounts??
Can I submit documents later??
A distributor can be so cheap. When no one is available for the first complicated problem, Suddenly the saved annual fee no longer feels particularly clever.
By the way, this also applies vice versa. Distributors have a legitimate interest in this, not having to play detective for every customer for weeks. Anyone who, as an artist, has reasonable documents and can respond to queries, makes life easier for both sides.
Maybe all this fraud madness will at least get us to that point in the end, to treat the DIY music industry a bit more professionally.
After all, DIY doesn’t mean “no rules”.
It just says, that you do the work yourself.
Large companies should not shirk their responsibility
What bothers me about many debates about streaming fraud, is the temptation, pass the problem completely down the line.
The artist should prove, that he is real.
The distributor should prove it, that the artist is real.
And then?
Streaming services have by far the best data on this, how music is actually heard. You see devices, Accounts, temporal patterns, Playlists, Regions and other signals, that a single musician can never see.
That's why combating fraud can't stop at the upload.
The IFPI fundamentally recognizes this itself. In their publications, responsibility is distributed across the entire chain: Distributors, DSPs, Music companies and, in some cases, law enforcement agencies.
This is important.
Spotify can't blame a musician, he should have recognized suspicious streams, when Spotify itself has a hundred times more information about these streams.
And a distributor shouldn't be held solely responsible, detect a sophisticated bot attack, which only begins months after the upload.
Everyone has to check there, where he actually has information.
Everything else is responsibility ping-pong.
AI makes the problem bigger, but AI is not the problem
This difference will become crucial in the coming years.
Generative music systems enable mass production. That's obvious.
You can use it to make fraud cheaper. Also obvious.
It still doesn't follow from that, that every AI track is fraudulent.
A musician can use generative systems as a tool. Someone else can use it to create a complete song. Both can then have real listeners.
You don't have to like the music.
Such publications can be considered inconsequential.
One can argue about the training methods of the providers.
But streaming fraud is something different.
Fraud starts there, where usage is artificially manipulated or other deceptive or infringing practices come into play.
We should not confuse these terms, just because “AI Slop” makes a wonderfully catchy headline.
Otherwise we will end up with anti-fraud rules, which are actually anti-AI rules, without anyone saying it openly.
And human musicians have surprisingly little of that.
What I think of the initiative
The bottom line is that I think the Streaming Integrity Initiative is overdue.
Not because I suddenly have unlimited trust in music associations, Major labels and automatic recognition systems would have been developed. That would be asking a bit much.
The reason is simpler: If someone manipulates the streaming system industrially, he takes money from a market, in which real musicians fight for every fraction of a cent anyway.
I have little understanding for that.
Who buys bots, Fake artists mass-produce or build automated catalogs exclusively for this purpose, To outsmart royalty systems, should fly out.
Gladly quickly.
The more exciting task begins afterwards. We have to prevent it, that the countermeasures again mainly affect those, who already have the least power.
A major label can call someone if they have a problem.
The independent artist receives a ticket with the number #847293 and the note, please do not reply to this email.
If the industry wants stricter controls, It therefore needs better transparency at the same time, provide reasonable avenues for appeal and accessible support.
For me that goes together.
The next few months will show, whether the Streaming Integrity Initiative will actually become a common standard or remain primarily a voluntary commitment, which everyone interprets a little differently.
It will also be interesting, whether DistroKid will join in and how the parallel legal dispute with Universal Music Group will continue.
In any case, the development is more relevant for independent musicians and small labels, than the somewhat bureaucratic name “Streaming Integrity Initiative” suggests.
Because there is a pretty fundamental change behind this name.
The distributor was once mainly there for that, to deliver our music.
Now he should increasingly make decisions, who we are, whether our rights are correct, whether our music looks suspicious and whether we are even allowed into the streaming system.
That can help, to keep a lot of garbage and fraud out.
Then we should look damn closely, who controls the bouncer.
Sources
IFPI – Streaming Integrity Initiative, 14. September 2026
https://www.ifpi.org/music-companies-unite-in-new-commitment-to-combat-streaming-fraud-in-order-to-protect-artists-songwriters-and-fans/
Streaming Integrity Initiative – complete five principles
https://endstreamingfraud.com/streaming-integrity-initiative
IFPI – Global Music Report 2026
https://www.ifpi.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/GMR2026_SOTI2.pdf
IFPI – Global Music Report 2026, Summary and market figures
https://www.ifpi.org/global-music-report-2026-global-recorded-music-revenues-grow-6-4-as-record-companies-drive-innovation/
IFPI – Rules for AI-assisted recordings in official charts, 30. July 2026
https://www.ifpi.org/ifpi-rolls-out-global-principles-for-the-eligibility-of-recordings-developed-using-ai-in-official-music-charts-worldwide/
Music Business Worldwide – DistroKid is missing from the new anti-fraud standards at launch, 14. September 2026
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/distrokid-new-anti-fraud-standards-unlike-cd-baby/
Reuters – Universal Music Group is suing DistroKid, 15. September 2026
https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/umg-sues-distrokid-allegedly-distributing-ai-slop-music-2026-09-15/