Investigative website ProPublica claims that Spotify and Apple Music’s artist profile systems have been exploited in order to gain coveted Instagram verified profiles.  The alleged scammers would create fake artist profiles, upload music (“often nothing more than basic looping beats”), and then illicitly boost the streaming numbers of those tracks, as well as buying articles promoting those artists on legitimate websites. This mix of streaming numbers, the presence of a “verified artist” check on the artist’s Spotify profile, and external media coverage was then used as  “proof” in applications for a Instagram verification checkmark.

The latest round of rate-setting for publishing royalties for on-demand audio streams in the US – known as ‘Phonorecords IV’ – has been settled surprisingly quickly. That headline royalty rate, which  streaming services must now pay to publishers for “certain mechanical streaming rates” will be set at 15.35%, and it will be phased in over the five-year term of 2023-27. 

Spotify is revamping the section of its app focusing on live music. It has replaced the existing ‘Concerts Hub’ with a new ‘Live Events Feed’ populated by listings from ticketing firms including Ticketmaster, AXS, Dice, Eventbrite and See Tickets.

Mdundo is one of the pan-African music streaming services that has been growing over the past couple of years. It ended 2021 with 13.3 million monthly active users, but in a strategy update published for investors yesterday, the company said it expects to have 19-20 million users by the end of this month.

Tencent Music has just launched a new suite of tools for its industry partners. TME Business Intelligence for Artists will be updated “150 times a day” with data from TME’s streaming services, offering stats at an artist, album and track level.

Spotify has snapped up Heardle, the Wordle-inspired music identification game that became popular earlier this year. Spotify says it will keep the web-based game “free to play for everyone”, although in the short term its availability will be restricted to the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.