February 23, 2023

Andrew Batey on How to Tackle Fraud in Streaming and Making it as an Artist Today

Editorial Operations Manager

“Fear At The Top” co-hosts Luke Girgis and Poppy Reid chat to Andrew Batey, CEO of Beatdapp.

Andrew Batey has detailed the extent of fraud happening on music streaming services and the impacts this has on artists, labels, publishers and the platforms themselves.

His business, Beatdapp, helps the streaming platforms identify fraud, and he said it’s surprising just how much activity isn’t driven by real listeners.

“Initially, we thought it would be, frankly, large artists trying to game the system just to stay relevant, or independent artists trying to break out,” he explains on the podcast, but notes this is not actually the case.

“So 80%, our estimate of the fraud, is financially motivated fraud. So people who aren’t even in the music industry that are putting crap music up, running bots against it – you know fraudsters who are trying to money launder through the industry, they don’t need to make 100% of their money back, they just need to pump a bunch of money in via bots and how much they’ve spent [in] hard costs and then get that money back the other side in actual payments.

“So you have this massive elephant in the room that is not music industry professionals, that are siphoning off money that should be going to actual labels and should be going to actual artists.”

Batey also explores “growth hacks” for artists in today’s environment, noting the game has changed so much, but old tricks are actually the ones that work.

Real life connections and interactions with fans, he says, are what’s going to get the job done.

“Because all the other ones, like you might get hot for a second and suddenly be on all these playlists, or you get hot on TikTok and suddenly it drives you into a chart, but none of that’s sustainable, like you end up two years from now being like ‘Oh what was that one song from that one guy that one time on TikTok?’ You have no actual fans, you have no actual base, all you’ve done is just sort of short circuit yourself out of the career you looked for,” he says.

“I think no one wants to do the hard work. So to me, the silver bullet growth hack is doing the exact opposite of everyone else. Like go do all of the shows, go meet all of the people, shake the hands, do the things everyone hated doing before, because it’s a different game now. Now people are passively listening and you need to break through, and the only way to break through I think is through the experiential side… because that authenticity that happens when you’re in the same room is just so hard to replicate online, and I think you have to just grind it out.

“That’s the way you win as an artist today.”