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AI, bot farms and innocent indie victims: how music streaming became a hotbed of fraud and fakery
Fraudsters use fake artists to juice royalties from streaming services – but real musicians are getting blamed. Might they be better off without Spotify et al?
“You’re not going to listen to the same song at the same time across multiple devices,” Owen says, noting that countries like India, Vietnam, Thailand and parts of eastern Europe are hotbeds of click-farm activity, using low-paid workers. Matthew Whiteside of The Night With … Photograph: Julie HowdenAdam J Morgan, who makes music as indie act Naked & Baked, had a track get over 10,000 streams in a week, possibly from use in a TikTok video, but it was zapped by his distributor RouteNote as suspicious. Matthew Whiteside, artistic director of experimental classical event The Night With… (and head of the TNW Music label) had three different albums taken down amid claims of artificial streaming.
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