Are streaming platforms doing enough to curb stream farming?

The advent of music streaming has massively contributed to the commercial success of Nigerian music which is currently enjoying global patronage. 

While music streaming opened Nigerian music to global possibilities, it also brought the vanity metrics of numbers and charts that artists and labels can hardly resist. With numbers and charts becoming a major metric for success, artists and labels often find ways to juice up their numbers in what quickly became a streaming farm problem in Nigerian music.

Due to music stream farming, the DSP charts have gone from being a fair reflection of consumer preferences to a manipulated platform for marketing and popularity. These issues have necessitated a crackdown from digital streaming platforms which have rolled out measures to curb stream farming.

How are the DSPs reacting? 

Apple Music and Spotify are investing in technologies that monitor streaming activities to find even the smallest possibility of fraud.

These platforms carry out forensic audits of streams to ensure that they are organic (humans listening to them). Red flags such as multiple accounts associated with the same credit card or a volume of streams coming from the same area are ways stream farming activities are detected and curbed.

While streaming manipulation might not be a major problem at a global scale for Apple Music where it accounts for below 1% of the total monthly streams, it appears to still be endemic in Nigeria where there are still signs of manipulation like sporadic rise and fall of songs on the Apple Music Top 100.

Apple Music is taking its crackdown a step further by combining technology with a human approach through a dedicated team of experts around the world tasked with round-the-clock coverage of streaming activities.

Spotify, for example, verifies streams before adding them in real time which then translates to charting positions to reduce the chances of manipulation. In cases where manipulations are detected, Apple Music, for example, deducts them in near real-time which accounts for the recent sporadic drop of songs on the the Apple Music Nigeria Top 100.

Perhaps the stiffest measure to curb streaming manipulation is Apple Music’s policy of taking down manipulated songs with the possible penalty of royalty deduction and blacklisting for the defaulting artist and distributor.

Are the DSPs doing enough? 

While DSPs are reacting, their action appears to be coming a little late which might have allowed streaming manipulation to fester in Nigeria.

With their current crackdown, DSPs are displaying a commitment to tackle streaming manipulation although it does appear that smaller artists are mostly the target of these actions.

If streaming platforms are to show a true commitment to curbing the trend, they must be ready to take on the bigger artists who engage in the act as the capital intensity of streaming manipulation makes it an act mostly exclusive to bigger artists and labels with the resources to engage in it.

Taking down songs by an A-list star will send a strong message to the ecosystem that no one is untouchable and this will also help correct the “if you can’t beat them, join them” mindset that drives artists and labels to streaming manipulation.

Who is best positioned to curb stream farming? 

While DSPs are investing in technology and human capital to curb streaming manipulations, artists, labels, and third-party services that engage in the act are looking for loopholes to bypass these checks.

The DSPs can only do so much as streaming manipulating is the digital manifestation of the continuous effort of artists and labels to game the system.

Before music streaming, artists and labels bought their CDs and songs on iTunes to prop up sales to get higher chart placements and influence consumer opinion by creating a semblance of success and the fear of missing out.

Hence, curbing streaming manipulation remains primarily within the capacity of artists, labels, and distributors who can choose not to engage in it.

However, since actors in the music industry will always find loopholes to get an unfair advantage, DSPs must endeavour to be a step ahead of them by constantly rejigging their technology and processes to reduce streaming manipulations to the barest minimum.