{
  "slug": "streaming-royalty-fraud",
  "title": "Nobody listened, and the royalties were paid anyway",
  "summary": "Deezer found up to 85 percent of streams on fully AI generated tracks were fraudulent. The durable fix is proving the listener, not classifying the track.",
  "lede": "Deezer said in January 2026 that up to 85 percent of the streams on fully AI generated tracks were fraudulent, and stopped paying for them. That number is usually read as a story about AI music. It is not. It is a story about a payout system that has never once been able to tell whether a person was in the room.",
  "date": "2026-09-19",
  "reading_time": "17 min read",
  "category": "Platforms",
  "tags": ["streaming fraud", "music royalties", "AI music", "bot streams", "proof of human", "verified listener"],
  "image": "https://cdn.twc.sh/images/igcache/Streaming%20Royalty%20Fraud/1200_630/blog.jpg",
  "url": "/blog/streaming-royalty-fraud.html",
  "wordcount": 4471,
  "related": ["one-human-one-review", "verified-human-conversions", "proof-of-human-work"],
  "schema": "Article"
}