{"id":487243,"date":"2019-06-20T13:07:51","date_gmt":"2019-06-20T19:07:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=850428"},"modified":"2019-06-20T13:07:51","modified_gmt":"2019-06-20T19:07:51","slug":"the-music-industry-signs-a-pledge-against-fake-streams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/the-music-industry-signs-a-pledge-against-fake-streams\/","title":{"rendered":"The Music Industry Signs a Pledge Against Fake Streams"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Streaming manipulation \u2013 the practice of artificially inflating stream counts to produce false listening data \u2013 is the music industry<\/a>\u2019s hot-button issue<\/a> at the moment. On Thursday, an assortment of music publishers, record labels, royalty-collection societies and other groups signed a code of conduct condemning fake streams and pledging to work together to eradicate them, marking the industry\u2019s first collective agreement on the issue.<\/p>\n

The document was two years in the making by the International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP), a Brussels trade group representing dozens of publishers and publishers\u2019 associations. It defines streaming manipulation as the artificial creation of plays \u2014 by automated accounts, human \u201ctroll farms\u201d and other practices that don\u2019t represent genuine listening \u2014 and asks the parties involved to help spot, prevent and reduce streaming manipulation. Signatories include the three major record companies (Sony, Warner, Universal), as well as large publishers like Sony\/ATV and Kobalt; streaming services including Amazon, Deezer and Spotify; and other large industry groups including the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the National Music Publishers\u2019 Association (NMPA).<\/p>\n

\u201cStreaming manipulation has been an unfortunate blight on the industry over the past few years, leading to entirely distorted revenue streams and entirely distorted listening patterns,\u201d IMCP director general John Phelan tells Rolling Stone<\/em>. \u201cSomething needs to be done about it. There is a black market for pay-for-play. But accurate data is crucial to making sure the digital music marketplace is fair.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the last few years, the music industry has increasingly complained of under-the-table companies that offer packages of automated or high-volume streams, and many executives say the usage of such services is proliferating rapidly. According to some label heads, fake streams could be costing artists as much as $300 million a year: Hopeless Records founder Louis Posen told Rolling Stone<\/em><\/a> this week that his colleagues believe \u201cthree to four percent of global streams are illegitimate streams,\u201d and pointed to many whispers around the industry of \u201ccomputerized click farms and bots\u201d artificially inflating stream counts.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSomething needs to be done about it. There is a black market for pay-for-play\u201d \u2013 IMCP\u2019s John Phelan<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But record labels seeking bigger profits and higher chart positions, not just rogue artists, seem to also be part of the problem. \u201cThere are third parties offering services that have fallen across some labels\u2019 desks and that\u2019s clearly an illegitimate act, even verging on criminality,\u201d Phelan says. \u201cIt\u2019s not up to the music industry to police this kind of activity, so we feel the best way of addressing it is circling the wagons and getting the big players together to say we have to tackle this. I\u2019m glad our colleagues are working together. There\u2019s no excuses left.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the code of conduct says signatories agree to work together to exchange best practices against streaming manipulation and will \u201cimplement a set of balanced, commercially reasonable measures and controls enabling the prevention and\/or reduction of stream manipulation,\u201d the document is not legally binding and does not affect private agreements between streaming services and rights-holders \u2014 so it comes down to whether the parties involved will keep their word.<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Streaming manipulation \u2013 the practice of artificially inflating stream counts to produce false listening data \u2013 is the music industry\u2019s hot-button issue at the moment. On Thursday, an assortment of music publishers, record labels, royalty-collection societies and other groups signed a code of conduct condemning fake streams and pledging to work together to eradicate them, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-487243","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-21 13:26:13","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KQZR - The Reel","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}