Streaming fraud continues to be a big problem for the music business, and music data tracking company Beatdapp has revealed statistics showing what it claims to be the extent of the issue.
Having analyzed what is says are “4 trillion streams and 40 trillion user events”, Beatdapp estimates that “at least 10% of global streams are fraudulent”.
The company also says it has identified 50 music distributors among whom more than half of all streams are fraudulent.
Earlier this year, Beatdapp estimated that streaming fraud takes some $2 billion per year out of the pockets of legitimate rights holders, as bot-powered fake streams rack up the stream counts that determine who gets paid by streaming services.
Fortunately, clients of business-to-business streaming tech provider Tuned Global will now be able to use Beatdapp’s technology to prevent fraud on their own streaming platforms.
The two companies announced on Tuesday (October 8) that they’ve formed a strategic partnership that will integrate Beatdapp’s fraud detection tools into platforms built by Tuned Global.
The partnership “will enable Tuned Global’s clients to ensure that royalties are fairly distributed,” the companies said in a statement.
But the partnership extends well beyond DSPs, to include many of the emerging platforms where music is increasingly being consumed, such as Discord, gaming consoles, VR headsets, and Web 3-based services.
“As the music industry evolves, demonstrating active measures to combat streaming fraud will become essential for securing licenses from labels and publishers,” said Spiro Arkoudis, Chief Revenue Officer at Tuned Global.
“Fraud prevention is moving from being a ‘nice-to-have’ to an industry requirement. Beatdapp is the leader in this space, and their technology is the obvious choice to provide this vital service to our clients.”
“Fraud prevention is moving from being a ‘nice-to-have’ to an industry requirement.”
Spiro Arkoudis, Tuned Global
Under the new partnership, Beatdapp’s tech will use hundreds of anonymized data points collected from Tuned Global-built backends to detect patterns that indicate fraud.
“Our deep integration with Tuned Global sets a new industry standard for fraud detection, ensuring every music streaming project built on their platform benefits from our technology,” Beatdapp Co-CEOs Andrew Batey and Morgan Hayduk said.
“By leveraging the anonymized data collected by Tuned Global, we’re able to detect fraud more precisely and efficiently. This partnership provides us with a powerful framework to expand our reach and establish a standard for fraud prevention across a variety of platforms.”
The integration “enables our clients to safeguard their digital music initiatives from the start,” added Con Raso, Tuned Global’s Managing Director. “This collaboration reflects Tuned Global’s commitment to providing businesses with all the tools necessary to create ethical, sustainable music services.”
For Beatdapp, the Tuned Global partnership is just the latest in a series of deals with music industry companies. Most recently, it partnered with The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC), the government-mandated collector of mechanical royalties in the US, to “complement and enhance” the MLC’s own fraud detection systems.
Early this year, Beatdapp announced it had raised $17 million in a new funding round, and had signed partnerships with Universal Music Group (UMG), SoundExchange, and Napster (the new, legal version of Napster, that is).
“By leveraging the anonymized data collected by Tuned Global, we’re able to detect fraud more precisely and efficiently.”
Andrew Batey and Morgan Hayduk, Beatdapp
Also this year, Beatdapp inked a partnership with Turntable Labs’ social music platform Hangout FM. And last year, AI music generator Boomy signed up for Beatdapp’s services, months after some of its tracks were pulled off of Spotify under suspicion of streaming fraud.
Meanwhile, Tuned Global’s client list continues to grow steadily. In just the past year, the company’s services were tapped by the likes of Web3 music streaming platform Sona, lyric licensing company LyricFind, and Nigerian music streaming app Jumamo. It also teamed up with international travel media network Spafax to offer license-cleared music for in-flight entertainment systems.
Perhaps most notably, in September Tuned Global formed an expanded partnership with UMG that will “bring the recorded music licensing process into Tuned Global’s suite of services.”Music Business Worldwide