Julius Young — Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Vantage
IFPI issued new anti-fraud guidelines after industry executives estimated nearly 10% of music streams are fake. The EU's AI Act watermark mandate, enforceable since August, was built for this exact reckoning.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry has issued new guidelines directing music distributors to take stronger action against fraudulent streaming activity, after industry executives estimated that nearly 10 percent of all music streams are now fake. The mechanics are cheap to run: generative AI tools make it trivial to produce large volumes of tracks, which are then played on repeat by networks of automated bot accounts to manufacture stream counts and divert royalty payments away from human artists.
The timing connects directly to a piece of regulation this publication covered when it took effect. The EU's AI Act became enforceable on August 2, requiring mandatory watermarking of AI-generated content, including music. At the time, the case for the rule rested partly on suspicion that a meaningful share of music flooding streaming platforms was AI-generated fraud. IFPI's new estimate gives that suspicion a number.
The industry's technical response is converging on a similar tool. The Content Authenticity Initiative has expanded its C2PA provenance standard to cover AI-generated audio, and platforms including Suno, Udio, and ElevenLabs Music have committed to embedding compliant watermarks by default. None of this retroactively returns the royalties fraud has already siphoned out of the pool. Related: The EU Just Made AI Music Watermarking Mandatory