According to Beatdapp Software, a music data tracking firm that describes itself as a “leading authority in fraud detection,” streaming fraud takes around $2 billion out of artists’ royalties per year, distributing that money to the owners of low-quality content designed to skim cash from streaming revenues.
“No one notices that a few pennies are going to this song and a few pennies are going to that song but, in aggregate, they can steal billions of dollars,” Beatdapp co-CEOs Andrew Batey and Morgan Hayduk told Sky News recently. That money would have gone to real artists that would have been used to pay out managers and agents and lawyers, labels, distributors. But instead it’s syphoned off and it goes to professional scammers who are just stealing from the industry.”
