Streaming fraud is surging and artificial intelligence is at the centre of it.
A new report from French music streaming platform Deezer claims that up to 70% of streams of AI-generated tracks on its service are fraudulent. While songs made by artificial intelligence account for just 0.5% of all Deezer plays, a large chunk of those listens are being gamed by bots.
The scam? Create AI tracks, set bots to stream them on loop, and collect the royalties. Once scaled across multiple fake songs, the payouts add up and it’s pushing real artists further out of the equation.
“As long as there is money in fraudulent streaming there will be efforts, unfortunately, to try to get a profit from it,”
— Thibault Roucou, Director of Royalties and Reporting at Deezer (via The Guardian)
Deezer says it’s fighting back using detection tools that can identify fully AI-generated tracks from popular platforms like Suno and Udio. Royalty payments on confirmed fraudulent streams are now being blocked.
Still, the numbers are staggering. According to the company, AI-generated uploads make up 18% of all new tracks on Deezer — around 20,000 tracks per day. These range from generic pop and rap to lo-fi mood music, all created with no human input and ripe for exploitation.
The perpetrators behind the scam haven’t been identified, but Roucou says the activity appears to be “organised”. And with the global streaming economy worth $20.4 billion in 2023 (per IFPI), there’s a lot of money on the table.
Real artists are losing out
The issue is part of a larger problem facing the music industry: streaming manipulation. The IFPI’s most recent Global Music Report warns that royalty fraud diverts money away from legitimate musicians. The rise of generative AI has only made the problem worse.
“Fraudulent streaming steals money that should be going to legitimate artists.”
— IFPI, Global Music Report 2024
This isn’t just theory. In 2023, US musician Michael Smith was charged with creating hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs and streaming them billions of times in a scheme that reportedly netted him $10 million in royalties.
Deezer’s AI battle plan
Deezer is taking a proactive stance:
- AI Content Detection: The platform claims to detect 100% of tracks created using leading AI models.
- Royalty Blocking: Streams flagged as fraudulent no longer generate payouts.
- Algorithm Removal: Fully AI-generated content is excluded from Deezer’s algorithmic recommendations.
With over 10 million subscribers, Deezer is a much smaller player than Spotify, which sits at 268 million paid users, but its handling of the AI fraud problem is being watched closely by the wider industry.
As AI music creation tools become easier to access, the race is on to protect royalties and restore trust in streaming platforms. For now, Deezer’s message is clear: if you’re using bots to cash in on fake music, you won’t get paid.
