Photo credit: Nick Fewings
The Music Fights Fraud Alliance unites all sectors of the music industry in the fight against the growing threat of music streaming fraud.
A new global task force to eliminate streaming scams, the Music fights scam alliance (MFFA) represents all sectors of the music industry and for the first time comes together as a unified front to fight music streaming fraud. The movement’s mission is to ensure that the global music streaming market is fair and that all members actively contribute to solutions designed to balance the fairness of their activities.
“As an alliance, our members hope to detect, prevent, contain and enforce anti-fraud measures, moving us closer to an industry where fraud has no place,” the statement read on its website.
It is estimated that the music industry loses hundreds of millions of dollars each year to streaming abuse by bots, streaming click farms and scammers. These issues affect all artists, both self-released and label-signed, and are impacting the music industry by diluting the licensing pool and reducing revenue from legitimate streams, slowing down the approval and publishing process for creators.
“Streaming fraud in all its forms is recognized as one of the biggest – and growing – problems in the recorded music business. AIM welcomes any initiatives by distributors, platforms and labels to help effectively address this issue,” commented Silvia Montello, CEO of AIM, the non-profit organization representing and supporting the UK’s independent music community.
“The Music Fights Fraud Alliance, whose aim is to identify fraudsters, prevent distributor hopping tactics and allow large-scale criminals to investigate fraud, can only be a step in the right direction. AIM encourages these and other initiatives that use technology to assist in the gatekeeping of content uploads, so true artists and creators receive the royalties that are due to them.”
“I’m excited to see DSPs and distributors of all stripes coming together to address the growing problem of streaming fraud,” adds Pascal Bittard, President of IDOL, a digital distributor that provides the world’s leading service to some of the most respected names in independent offers, plus music. “It will be interesting to see what the next steps are for the alliance and IDOL will be interested in getting involved if there are concrete actions.”
“DSPs must continue to improve their resources and technological efforts if they are to better detect all forms of fraudulent activity. Bigger rightsholders, meanwhile, need to take action and be more clear about what action they intend to take against the artists, labels, producers and executives behind such scams.”
MFFA members ensure better 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. NCFTA’s mission is to provide a neutral, trusted environment that allows multiple parties to work together to identify, contain, and stop cybercrime.