Takedown Fails: Artists Are Seeing Their Music Removed From DSPs for Streaming Fraud They Didn’t Commit

From April 9, 2024

On Feb. 9, the electronic artist Benn Jordan, who performs under the alias the Flashbulb, was attempting to reference one of his songs during a recording session but couldn’t access his music on Spotify or Tidal. He thought at first that his phone was glitching — but then he began receiving messages from fans asking him why he’d removed all of his music from streaming platforms. Not surprisingly, panic set in.

Jordan, who to date has earned more than $500,000 in streaming royalties and relies on them for a significant part of his income, had been unwittingly caught up in streaming services’ new crackdown on fraud. TuneCore, his distributor, had received a notice from Spotify indicating that significant artificial streaming activity had been detected on his music. TuneCore summarily removed all 23 of his albums from all streaming platforms — without warning.

Streaming fraud is one of the most serious problems facing the music industry. Because most streaming platforms operate on a pro-rata payment model — in which payment is based on an artist’s share of total streams — fraudsters have managed to steer millions of dollars away from legitimate artists, songwriters, labels and publishers. And because DIY distributors like TuneCore and Distrokid allow virtually anyone to distribute unlimited audio files to streaming platforms for around $20 per year, at a volume that is extremely difficult to police effectively, the barrier to entry is virtually nonexistent. (Note: the warning about a violation in Spotify policies pictured in the above image is from Distrokid.)

Artists that use DIY distributors like these collectively earned $1.8 billion in 2023, representing just over 5% of the total market share of the global recorded music industry, according to music research firm MIDiA.

Find the rest of the article at the link.