The Western High Court of Denmark has increased the sentence of a 54-year-old man convicted of orchestrating one of the largest streaming fraud schemes, raising his prison term to 24 from 18 months.<\/p>\n
In March last year, the Eastern Jutland resident was found guilty<\/a> of data fraud and copyright infringement after using bots to artificially inflate the stream count on 689 tracks he had uploaded to streaming services including Apple Music, Spotify, <\/b>and YouSee Musik.<\/b><\/p>\n At the time, the court ordered\u00a0 <\/span>DKK 2 million <\/b>(USD $276,000) to be confiscated from the defendant, and added a DKK 200,000<\/b> ($27,600) fine.<\/p>\n Most recently, following an appeal, the Western High Court increased the man\u2019s sentence \u201cas there is evidence of extensive fraud amounting to no less than DKK 3.5 million<\/b>\u201d that should have gone to artists, according to the Danish Rights Alliance<\/b><\/a>.<\/p>\n The scheme involved releasing edited versions of music copied from Danish musicians under his own name.<\/p>\n “We find it deeply regrettable that the compensation claims of rights holders are not included in the case.”<\/p>\n Maria Fredenslund, Rights Alliance<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Of the two-year sentence, the convicted individual will serve three months for \u201caggravated data fraud and copyright infringement.\u201d The court ordered substantial financial penalties, including the confiscation of DKK 1.5 million <\/b>from the defendant personally and DKK 2 million <\/b>from his company. Additionally, the company faces a DKK 300,000 <\/b>fine.<\/p>\n Maria Fredenslund<\/b>, CEO of Rights<\/b> Alliance<\/b>, which initially reported the case in 2018 on behalf of various music industry organizations, welcomed the increased sentence, while expressing concern about the handling of compensation claims.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ruling also sends a crucial signal that such actions will be punished. At the same time, we find it deeply regrettable that the compensation claims of rights holders are not included in the case. This results in unnecessary resource consumption for rights holders, the convicted individual, and the judicial system.<\/p>\n \u201cGiven that this case has already dragged on since our initial report in 2018, it is unfortunate that it must now continue in civil court. If even a high-profile case like this \u2013 where massive fraud has impacted the entire Danish music industry \u2013 does not lead to compensation, we fear that in practice, obtaining restitution is not a real possibility for rights holders.\u201d<\/p>\n The case has drawn attention from major figures in Denmark’s music industry. Gorm Arildsen<\/b>, CEO of collection society Koda<\/b>, described the ruling as \u201can important step in the fight against fraud and the manipulation of streaming in the music industry,\u201d while IFPI<\/strong>‘s Communications Director, Lasse Lindholm<\/b>, said the verdict represents \u201ccrucial support for those who dedicate their lives to creating music for all of us to enjoy.\u201d<\/p>\n The development comes as streaming manipulation becomes increasingly sophisticated, particularly with the rise of AI in music production. In July, music data tracking firm Beatdapp Software<\/b> said streaming fraud takes around $2 billion<\/b><\/a> out of artists\u2019 royalties per year, distributing that money to the owners of low-quality content designed to skim cash from streaming revenues.<\/p>\n Beatdapp partnered<\/a> with Tuned Global<\/b> in October to tackle streaming fraud in music apps.<\/p>\n In the US, a North Carolina musician was indicted<\/a> in September for allegedly generating over $10 million<\/b> in fraudulent royalties using \u201chundreds of thousands of songs\u201d and bot accounts.<\/p>\n Over 1 million manipulated tracks are estimated to exist on major streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music<\/b>, and TIDAL<\/b>, according to Pex<\/b>‘s analysis<\/a> of copyrighted content. Some of these tracks have garnered millions of listens.<\/p>\n The music industry has rolled out measures to address streaming fraud. In July, music distributor and artist services company Amuse<\/b> unveiled<\/a> a feature called \u2018Stream Check\u2019 that lets artists know if their streams are being artificially inflated through streaming fraud.<\/p>\n In October, MBW <\/i>reported that TikTok\u2019s decision to shut down its negotiations<\/a> with Merlin was partly due to \u201cconcerns\u201d about streaming fraud.<\/p>\n \u201cThis isn\u2019t about bad blood with Merlin. By doing direct deals, if we detect any kinds of content copyright issues, we can address it directly. It\u2019s that simple,\u201d Ole Obermann<\/b>, Global Head of Music Development and IP at\u00a0TikTok<\/b>,\u00a0said<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Eastern Jutland resident was convicted for artificially inflating stream counts on 689 tracks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":211793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[130718,2109,102,128667,130491],"class_list":["post-223184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-artificial-streaming","tag-denmark","tag-ifpi","tag-koda","tag-streaming-fraud"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n