Two Billion Fake Streams: Why Apple Music is Doubling Its Fraud Penalties
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Where there is money to be made there’s always someone trying to work the system — and the music business is no exception. To combat this, Apple Music is doubling down on its penalties for artists and labels that try to inflate their streaming revenue by less than honest means.
The streaming entertainment business has dealt with streaming fraud since the first music streaming deal was signed. Now, Apple vice president Oliver Schusser, who oversees Apple Music, Apple TV, and more, has shared some inside information about how Apple is working to crack down on fake streams in Apple Music.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Schusser discussed what Apple is dealing with when it comes to Apple Music fraud, including doubling down on penalties for fraudsters. Apple’s move comes as AI music has become increasingly prevalent on music streaming services.
What is ‘Streaming Fraud?’
The traditional example of streaming fraud is when a musician or record label uses a network of bots to constantly stream their music around the clock to inflate streaming royalties. This makes it look like more listeners are playing their tunes, meaning a bigger commission for the artist or label.
However, there are other ways to pull off streaming fraud, including subscriber account manipulation, services that provide fraudulent services for a fee, and now fake AI-generated artists with fabricated names that try to collect royalties for low-quality “AI slop” or synthetic tracks.
Apple began fighting Apple Music fraud back in 2022 and has only increased its pressure over the years. Just one year after the anti-fraud campaign was launched the company reported that it had already cut down on stream manipulation by 30% in the first six months.
Escalating Fines
Apple’s strategy in squashing Apple Music fraud consists of a sliding scale of fines. When the fines system was first implemented, the penalty was 5% and was capped at 25%. As of February, Apple has doubled that fee, which now starts at 10% and is capped at 50% — a push driven by the surge in AI music that allows bad actors to more easily game the system.
“In layman’s terms, if you engage in streaming fraud amounting to say, $1 million, you’d be fined a maximum $500,000,” the The Hollywood Reporter report notes. Fraudulent streams themselves are also demonetized.
In the interview, Schusser discussed Apple’s efforts to reduce fraud on Apple Music, saying “This is a zero-sum game. I would like to live in a world where we have zero fraud on the platform, and this has been a very effective tool. Increasing the penalties takes the money from people who are cheating and puts it back into the system for those who aren’t.”
Schusser went on to say that Apple removed as many as two billion manipulated streams from the service in 2025 alone, which experts believe represents $17 million in royalties taken from legitimate artists.
A Game of ‘Whack a Mole’
He went on, saying “Streaming manipulation on our platform is already incredibly low. We literally have systems where we check and validate every single play on Apple Music. When we find fraud we remove the stream counts, we remove from the charts, and we take the money and put it back into the pool so that it goes to honorable artists. That’s a result of sort of the security we’ve built, the security we also have in iOS and the investments we make in technology.”
“Most of our competitors are really struggling with this. It’s a bit of Whack a Mole,” he said, indicating that while other streaming services are also attempting to crack down on streaming fraud, those streamers may lack the required enforcement infrastructure.
As for the rising amount of AI music on streaming services, it is becoming a problem as it helps empower fraudsters. French streaming service Deezer recently said it is seeing 60,000 AI songs uploaded to its platform every day, making up 39% of all daily uploads. As much as 85% of those new streams were uploaded with fraud in mind. In response, Deezer has developed more sophisticated AI-detection technology that can specifically spot tracks from popular generators like Suno and Udio — which it’s begun offering to the rest of the industry.
