Stay one step ahead of stream manipulation

Apple Music is committed to creating a fair and level playing field for artists, labels, and distributors alike. For more than two decades, we’ve worked to combat fraud and stream manipulation in the music industry, setting the standard across Apple Music and iTunes.

That starts with taking a proactive stance against stream manipulation, which includes any method of increasing play counts through the use of bots, fake accounts, and other means that are prohibited on our services. Today, stream manipulation rates on Apple Music continue to rank among the lowest in the industry—well below 1%.

We believe everyone across the music landscape has a role to play, including labels and distributors. To help you take action and prevent stream manipulation, we have five essential tips that can serve as your guide.

1. Establish policies explicitly prohibiting stream manipulation: Creating and enforcing clearly defined standards for the artists you work with is a quick and easy step that will help eliminate gray areas and exploitable opportunities.
2. Implement systems and processes to identify digital fingerprints for audio, video, and images: Impersonation is one of many ways that bad actors manipulate streams, and the best way to prevent the distribution of content that wrongly impersonates other artists is to detect it before it’s delivered.
   
3. Leverage Apple Music’s daily and monthly reports for stream manipulation: We provide multiple resources to help labels and distributors monitor the content they deliver to Apple Music and take action against potential instances of stream manipulation. These reports include stream checks, daily reports for “Flagged Streams” and “In Review Content,” monthly reports for “Excluded Streams,” and financial reports highlighting stream manipulation adjustments to royalty payouts. These can be accessed through our Music Analytics API.
   
4. Beware of bad actors: Any company or person that claims they can get you more plays on Apple Music for a fee is not authorized to do so by Apple. Partnering with fraudulent entities hurts artists with legitimate listeners and we discourage it in the strongest possible terms.
   
5. Work with a third-party auditor: If content you distribute or hold the rights to is being manipulated on one platform, there’s a chance it’s happening elsewhere as well. A third-party auditor that specializes in fraud detection can help identify where any stream manipulation involving your content is taking place, and prevent it from happening on other platforms.

Recently, we implemented proprietary detection models that allow us to identify AI-platform-generated content and take an even stronger stance against stream manipulation. When we detect that the majority of plays for an AI-platform-generated song are manipulated, we automatically remove it from the platform.

That said, removing content from Apple Music is a last resort, and we work closely with content providers to ensure as little content as possible is removed from our platform. Any incident involving suspected stream manipulation is always reviewed by a human before any content is taken down.

Going forward, eliminating stream manipulation from Apple Music will remain a top priority, and we look forward to working with labels and distributors to ensure the best experience possible for artists and listeners alike.