In the modern day, it is no secret that AI is becoming prevalent everywhere you look. With AI chatbots being created by every company under the sun being able to generate all sorts of things such as written stories, articles, art and especially music.
It’s very clear that AI music has grown to be a major thorn in the side of all sorts of musicians as it’s a form of creativity and expression being turned into a form of mass-produced slop and, according to Deezer, a French music streaming site, 70% of the streams of their music selection is fraudulent.
According to The Guardian, “The company said AI-made music accounts for just 0.5% of streams on the music streaming platform but its analysis shows that fraudsters are behind up to 70% of those streams. AI-generated music is a growing problem on streaming platforms. Fraudsters typically generate revenue on platforms such as Deezer by using bots to ‘listen’ to AI-generated songs – and take the subsequent royalty payments.” The director of royalties and reporting, Thibault Roucou, stated that “As long as there is money [in fraudulent streaming] there will be efforts, unfortunately, to try to get a profit from it” and “That’s why we’re investing in fighting it, because we know it’s not going away and we need to be one step ahead every time.”
The implications of this report are staggering, as if there’s this much fraudulent streaming occurring on just one site, it’s easy to imagine how often it occurs on other sites such as Spotify and Soundcloud for example. Having bot accounts listen to music, let alone other forms of media such as videos, shows or even films on sites has become a common practice in the modern day to generate fake viewership and revenue. This method of garnering viewership is not only dishonest, but immoral as it steals money and revenue that could have gone to legitimate artists who generate their revenue from streaming their music fairly.
