The Music Fights Fraud Alliance unites all corners of the music industry in combating the growing threat of fraud in music streaming.
A new global task force aimed at eradicating streaming fraud, the Music Fights Fraud Alliance (MFFA) represents all corners of the music industry, aligning for the first time as a united front to combat fraud in music streaming. The movement’s mission is to ensure that the global music streaming market is fair and that all members actively contribute to solutions intended to balance the equity of its operations.
“As an alliance, our members hope to detect, prevent, mitigate, and enforce anti-fraud measures, thereby moving closer to an industry where fraud has no place,” reads the statement on their website.
It’s estimated that hundreds of millions of dollars are lost each year across the music industry, resulting from streaming abuse encompassing bots, streaming click farms, and imposters. These issues impact all artists, both self-published and those signed to labels, and it affects the music industry by diluting the royalty pool and reducing revenue for legitimate streams, slowing the approval and release process for creators.
“Streaming fraud, in all its guises, is recognized as one of the biggest — and growing — issues facing the recordings business. AIM welcomes all initiatives from distributors, platforms, and labels to help tackle it effectively,” comments Silvia Montello, CEO of AIM, the not-for-profit organization representing and supporting the UK’s independent music community.
“The Music Fights Fraud Alliance, which seeks to identify fraudsters, prevent ‘distributor hopping’ tactics, and enable fraud investigation for criminals operating at scale, can only be a step in the right direction. AIM encourages this and other initiatives using technology to assist in the gatekeeping of content uploads so that genuine artists and creators receive the royalties due to them.”
“I’m delighted to see DSPs and distributors of different stripes unifying to deal with the growing problem of streaming fraud,” adds Pascal Bittard, President at IDOL, a digital distributor providing world-leading service to some of the most prestigious names in independent music. “It will be interesting to see what the next steps for the alliance are, and IDOL will be keen to get involved if there is concrete action.”
“DSPs must continue improving their resources and technological efforts if they are to better detect all forms of fraudulent activities. Larger rightsholders, meanwhile, need to step up and be clearer about measures they intend to take against artists, labels, producers, and managers behind such fraud.”
MFFA members provide greater cross-platform collaboration and data sharing in coordination with the National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance (NCFTA), a non-profit partnership between private organizations, government, and academia. The NCFTA’s mission is to provide a neutral, trusted environment enabling multi-party collaboration to identify, mitigate, and disrupt cybercrime.
