Music Companies Unite in New Commitment to Combat Streaming Fraud in Order to Protect Artists, Songwriters and Fans

~Music distribution services invited to join Absolute Label Services, ADA, AWAL, CD Baby, CmdShft, Ditto Music, FUGA, GoDigital, HYBE, IDOL, IMPALA, InnerCat Music Group, Merlin, Redeye, Revelator, RouteNote, Secretly Distribution, Symphonic, Sony Music Group, The Orchard, Too Lost, Universal Music Group, Virgin Music Group and Warner Music Group in supporting action against streaming fraud~

14 September 2026, London - IFPI today announced the launch of the Streaming Integrity Initiative (SII), a new industry commitment to combat streaming fraud and protect artists, songwriters and fans from its harm. SII establishes a set of baseline practices for industry players to help prevent, detect and respond to streaming fraud.

Joining IFPI in support of the initiative is: Absolute Label Services, ADA, AWAL, CD Baby, CmdShft, Ditto Music, FUGA, GoDigital, HYBE, IDOL, IMPALA, InnerCat Music Group, Merlin, Redeye, Revelator, RouteNote, Secretly Distribution, Symphonic, Sony Music Group, The Orchard, Too Lost, Universal Music Group, Virgin Music Group and Warner Music Group.

Streaming fraud involves the manipulation of digital music services to generate revenue from plays that are not genuine. It is often happening at scale, undermining trust in streaming services and siphoning revenues away from the artists, songwriters, record labels, music publishers and others who power the music economy.

Recognising the vital role music distribution services play as a gateway to the digital music ecosystem and their unique ability to prevent fraudulent content from reaching streaming platforms, SII establishes a common baseline for industry action through five key commitments.

Participating distributors commit to:

• Verify rights ownership and customer identities through robust rights verification and Know Your Customer (KYC) processes;
• Vet content using effective tools and processes to identify infringement, fraudulent activity and AI-related risks;
• Act by detecting, investigating and mitigating suspected fraud, including acting against repeat offenders;
• Share intelligence, where legally permissible, to help prevent bad actors from moving across services and platforms; and
• Measure and continuously strengthen anti-fraud systems to address evolving threats.

These commitments are designed to strengthen prevention, improve detection, support enforcement action and increase collaboration across the industry.

The new initiative builds on the wider End Streaming Fraud campaign, launched by IFPI and leading music companies to raise awareness of the growing threat that streaming fraud poses across the music ecosystem.

As technology evolves and AI-powered tools become more widely available, robust fraud prevention and detection measures, and coordinated action across the music ecosystem, are more important than ever.

The organisations behind the initiative are calling on distributors, digital service providers, industry bodies and other stakeholders to support SII and help strengthen the industry's collective response to streaming fraud.

More information about the campaign can be found at www.endstreamingfraud.com.

Victoria Oakley, CEO, IFPI, said: "Streaming fraud misleads fans and deprives legitimate artists and songwriters of income that should rightfully flow to them. This is theft, plain and simple.

"We welcome the leadership shown by the first distributors to publicly support the Streaming Integrity Initiative, and hope this leads to direct, effective and coordinated action to protect artists, songwriters and fans from streaming fraud."

Sarah McNabb, Merlin's Director of Content Integrity, said: "Tackling illegitimate activity effectively requires every part of the industry to move together. These commitments reflect Merlin's own position and align closely with what Merlin already requires of its members. It's encouraging to see so many of our members already putting their names to this announcement, and we're glad to stand alongside IFPI in this initiative as it continues to grow."

Helen Smith, IMPALA Executive Chair, said: "IMPALA's Digital Music Plan adopted earlier this year set out our recommendations for growing the market and identified industry collaboration on a new scale as a top priority.

With recommendations for DSPs and labels as well as distributors, working together on integrity, promoting human artistry and other key aspects across the whole chain is vital."

Simon Wills, Managing Director, Absolute Label Service, said: "Combatting artificial streaming cannot be a reactive game of whack-a-mole, it demands intelligent, forward-looking technology paired with cross-industry collaboration.

By integrating deep, multi-signal fraud detection into our music OS, Anthology, Absolute is enabling rightsholders to identify potential irregularities early. We fully support IFPI's Streaming Integrity Initiative and are proud to champion a cleaner, fairer digital ecosystem for all artists and rightsholders."

ENDS

Notes to editors:

For further information please contact: [email protected]

Supporting organisations

The following organisations are supporting the Streaming Integrity Initiative and its efforts to combat streaming fraud:

About IFPI

IFPI is the voice of the recording industry worldwide, representing more than 8,000 record company members across the globe. We work to promote the value of recorded music, campaign for the rights of record producers and expand the commercial uses of recorded music around the world.

About Streaming Integrity Initiative

The full Streaming Integrity Initiative and list of signatories can be found at: www.endstreamingfraud.com

Streaming Integrity Initiative: Protecting Artists, Songwriters and Fans from Streaming Fraud

To Succeed, Distributors, Well Positioned to Prevent Uploads of Illegal Fakes, Must Commit to Act Against Streaming Fraud

Increasingly, streaming fraud harms the music ecosystem and its stakeholders - depriving artists and songwriters of their fair share of royalty revenue while also harming fans' experiences.

Typically, this involves bad actors' misuse of technology to dupe fans by uploading tracks intended for fraud to digital service providers (or DSPs), including via music distribution services (or distributors).

These criminals then deploy armies of bots to generate artificial plays and siphon money from royalty pools, diluting legitimate artists' share and reducing their compensation.

These are fake plays ripping off real artists and real fans. More must be done to stop it.

Each player across the music ecosystem has an important role to play in addressing this problem. Music distributors are a key entry point to the digital music ecosystem and supply DSPs with content in the first place. They are well-positioned to help prevent the uploading of tracks intended for fraud.

For their part, DSPs - as the interface with fans and as the manager of artist royalty pools - can act to detect fraud at the source. Music companies and law enforcement authorities must continue their multi-pronged, global campaigns of litigation and enforcement. Policymakers must ensure that the laws against streaming fraud are clear, strong and effective.

Below are the five baseline practices that distributors should embrace and implement to meaningfully help counter streaming fraud at the source.

We urge all distributors to commit to these five practices.

Together, we can fix this.

Five Practices to Counter Streaming Fraud

1. VERIFY

1. "Know Your Customer" (KYC)

Before distributing content, verify the identity and legitimacy of the customer through robust KYC and fraud checks.

2. VET

1. Content Filtering

Before making content available to DSPs and on a regular basis, use effective, industry-standard measures to ensure that content does not infringe third party rights, including lyrics and metadata checks, audio content recognition technologies and checks against other relevant databases.

1. AI Detection and Voice, Image Name and Likeness (VNIL) Rights Infringement Protections Implement measures to identify AI-generated content and vet for potential associated issues, including streaming fraud.

Adopt and contribute to the latest audio, artist and artwork recognition technologies to identify and prevent the distribution of content that infringes voice, name, image or likeness rights and other abuses on artist profiles.

3. ACT

1. Detection and Mitigation

Apply effective and dynamic measures to detect streaming anomalies, investigate cases of suspected fraud, and take reasonable measures to stop identified fraud and mitigate its impact.

1. Penalty System

After repeated violations, ban the customer across all platforms; this should not preclude the possibility of an immediate ban in appropriate circumstances.

4. SHARE

1. Cross Partner Checks

Identify potential infringement across streaming and social media platforms.

1. Bolster Information-Sharing Across Industry

Through data protection compliant industry information-sharing arrangements, share high-confidence indicators of fraudulent and infringing activity to help prevent offenders from re-entering the ecosystem through other services.

5. MEASURE

1. Improvements to Anti-Fraud Measures

On a regular basis, distributors should track the efficacy of their measures and make reasonable updates to capture new fraudulent activity, methods and actors based on its own data and information shared.