Apple Music is now cracking down harder than ever on streaming fraud after it first introduced penalties in 2022, which demonetised fraudulent streams and fined those responsible.
With the rapid growth of AI, streaming platforms are facing challenges with fraud. The most common type is when musicians or labels use a network of bots to engage in constant streaming, instantly boosting royalties.
While there are other ways to hack streaming in order to generate more royalties, this is the most common.
Apple became aware of the issue early, introducing penalties for fraudsters by introducing a sliding scale of fines.
When first implemented, the fee was five per cent of the accumulated royalties, and capped 25 per cent.
Now, they have been doubled, beginning at 10 per cent and capping at 50 per cent.
In addition, Apple demonetises the fraudulent steams, too.
Across the last year, they’ve demonetised as many as two billion fraudulent streams, which would have amounted to a total $17 million in royalties taken from other artists.
Oliver Schusser, the current Vice President of Apple Music, Apple TV+, Sports, and Beats stated:.
“In layman’s terms, if you engage in streaming fraud to say, $1 million, you’d be fined a maximum of $500,000,”
“Apple has removed billions of manipulated streams from the service in 2025 alone”.
“Most of our competitors are really struggling with it,”
Apple Music won’t say when fines become permanent bans. The company didn’t respond to questions about upgrading penalties to straight removal from the platform.
