Fighting Streaming Fraud at the Distributor Level

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With over 125,000 songs uploaded to music services every day, streaming fraud in all its forms has increasingly become one of the most important issues in the modern music industry. With the widespread adoption of music streaming, the proliferation of DIY artists, and the democratization of distribution that allows almost anyone to upload music to a DSP, we’ve seen a proportional rise in music fraud, on the order of 5-10% of all streams, according to Beatdapp. Here’s what we, as distributors, are doing about it.

Fighting Streaming Fraud at the Distributor Level
Let’s talk about fraud…
Whether it's through streaming networks, account hacking and impersonation, music leaks, track manipulation, or any number of other techniques, scammers are taking advantage of distributors and DSPs to siphon royalties from rights holders and artists into their own pockets - amounting to millions per year. This issue is extremely complex phone numbers in the philippines and requires a high level of nuance to not only detect, but also resolve and prevent. However, it's not just about one stakeholder in the industry. We all need to work together to solve this problem - labels, publishers, DSPs, and distributors alike. As someone passionate about this issue, I reached out to my team at Symphonic Distribution and my counterparts at other distribution companies to discuss how we could best combat this.



Know your customer

Jorge Brea, CEO of Symphonic Distribution
At Symphonic, we began focusing on know-your-customer (KYC) efforts when we saw a rise in fraud. We beefed up many of our departments, including legal and data intelligence, and established new standards with our payment providers. But nothing proved as effective as identity verification. At Symphonic, we made a conscious decision—based on a model established by fellow music distributor Too Lost—to ensure that everyone we do business with is a verifiable person. We partnered with identity verification company IDenfy, which performs a biometric scan of a potential new customer’s driver’s license, passport, or other form of photo ID, along with a selfie.

None of this personal data enters Symphonic's systems, we only receive the results from iDenfy. If they are not verified, we review your account and provide you with additional attempts to verify yourself. If your identity still cannot be verified, we cancel your account(s).

Since implementing this process, streaming fraud on Symphonic has decreased by over 50% (per monthly sign-ups) and additional steps are being taken to further improve.