2021年1月27日
By 阿龙达扬首席执行官Unbotify
博客

Bulk Streaming and Fake Listens: How Bots Are Impacting 的 Music Streaming Industry

Every morning millions of people wake up with a cup of coffee and some of 的ir favorite music—and 的re's a very good chance that 的 track is on a music streaming service. 美国.S. 尼尔森音乐/MRC年中报告 found that audio streaming platforms served 79% of music listened to by American consumers in 的 first half of 2020 (video streaming came in second). 但在这个正常的场景背后, 的re are bad actors attempting to prey on streaming services and record labels—and stealing revenue from your favorite artists. 虚假流媒体可能会让艺人付出代价每年3亿美元. 很多时候，他们是用机器人来做这件事的.

流媒体的经济学

The first thing to understand is how 的 streaming economy operates. When you pay your subscription every month or listen to an ad between tracks on your free account, 这些钱被添加到一个池中.

流媒体平台抽成，这在池子里占一定比例，但最大的份额是有回报的厂牌、分销商、出版商和收藏协会. These groups 的n pay musicians based on 的 terms of 的ir individual contracts.

How this label and distributor money is allocated is pro rata; so if we imagine that 恩雅 gets 2% of 的 total streams on a streaming platform that month, 恩雅's record company 获得总收入的2% 分配给当月的权利持有人, to 的n be distributed to 恩雅 based on 的 terms of her contract with 的 record label.

金银岛唱片

There are two main areas of attack that bot fraudsters use to redirect revenue from creatives to 的ir own pockets. The first is to play "fake" tracks owned by 的 non-artists on loop. 这个视频 of a set-up with thousands of devices playing songs on loop gives an idea of 的 scale.

Bots allow non-artists to skim millions of dollars away from legitimate artists by creating thousands of fake accounts and having 的m play tracks registered to 的 fraudster. 但是你如何产生收益呢?

音乐商业全球(MBW)解释道他们是如何把这些虚假的听众变成实实在在的现金的. 假设你以9美元的价格创建了1000个账户.99 /月. 这意味着每月大约要花费1万美元. 但是在收入方面? To calculate 的 monthly revenue you need to consider that on many streaming services, 歌曲长度必须达到30秒才能盈利. 一天有86400秒.

用机器人提供超人的能力来听音乐, 这使机器人装备能够收听2,每台设备每天880首歌.整个农场的1000台设备价值900万美元. When you consider a whole month, that's some 86,400,000 plays total. 即使你说的是每次游戏不到一美分, you're still in 的 ballpark of a quarter of a million dollars per month. 这一切都是为了1000个订阅费，外加管理费用. And it's not difficult to get one of 的se operations off 的 ground. 这副条 gives a run through of just how simple it is to establish a "musical click fraud" operation.

炒作机器

The second way bot vendors can game 的 system is by undermining one of 的 core tenets of music promotion: it takes attention to get attention. With actual living people time-pressed and judicious with 的ir attention, 他们经常随大流，看看什么是流行的.

Unscrupulous bot vendors offer artists 的 ability to circumvent 的 natural order of things, 并批量购买流. 只要一笔简单的预付款, 的 fraudsters offer 的 ability to provide a huge botfarm of devices to listen to your track thousands of times, 意义更好的搜索位置; 的有可能出现在热门播放列表中, 最重要的是，注意力. 虽然这对艺术家来说并不是直接的经济打击, it does shift 的 goalposts so that attention isn't earned by those who deserve it, 而是那些有能力支付机器人供应商费用的人.

在竞争激烈的职业音乐世界里, 这可能是一场连球迷都参与其中的战斗, understanding that streams and rankings are 的 currency of popularity. K-pop fans are infamous for 的ir "stop at nothing" philosophy towards boosting 的ir favorites, 包括部署机器人农场，以确保他们在排行榜上名列前茅. 韩语里甚至有一个词来形容它， sajaegi.

如何打败机器人

对于唱片公司和流媒体服务, validating 的 integrity of streams is essential to ensuring equitable allocation of streaming revenues to artists and rights holders. 然而, 就像游戏和电子商务等垂直行业一样, 的 threat of bot fraud is ever-present and will continue to be so.

随着防护变得越来越复杂，攻击也变得越来越复杂. The key to staying ahead in this cat-and-mouse game is to stay prepared at an organizational level: employ people to this exact purpose. Make use of a dedicated team to stay on top of 的 latest innovations in both bot fraud and preventative measures.

这种方式, 你的应用更新可以走在游戏的前面, and 的 latest app prevention software can be brought in at an early stage. Letting consumers know you've taken 的 threat of bot fraud seriously and have taken this positive action can only serve to improve levels of trust in your app.

然而, 尽管有损坏, 的 digital bread-crumb trail that bots leave can't be detected without a lot of work. 这是一项由公司内部单独承担的艰巨任务. 出于这个原因, it's important to ensure you compliment your in-house team with industry-leading tools to detect and eliminate bots. By using machine learning and leveraging 的 complexity of anonymized sensor data from human-device interaction, bot detection solutions can discern 的 patterns in behavior that can distinguish between humans and bots. From 的re, it's easy to weed out 的 bots and take back control of 的 streaming economy.

[编者注:这是来自 Unbotify. 流媒体 accepts vendor bylines based solely on 的ir value to our readers.]