Apple Music demonetised two billion “fraudulent” streams in 2025, VP reveals

Apple Music demonetised two billion “fraudulent” music streams in 2025, according to the streaming platform’s Vice President, Oliver Schusser.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he revealed that the platform had been stepping up efforts to penalise people who are caught “engaging in streaming fraud”. According to figures obtained via a royalty calculator from the law firm Manatt Phelps & Phillips, last year’s demonetised streams accounted for around $17 million in royalties that could have instead been directed towards real artists.

Apple Music introduced fraud penalties in 2022, with such punishments seeing them fine fraudsters a fee based on what would’ve been royalties for other legitimate artists. The fee started at 5% and went up to 25%. As of the start of this month, these fines have doubled to set a 10% minimum cap and 50% maximum cap.

“This is a zero-sum game,” Schusser told The Hollywood Reporter in reference to streaming fraud. “I would like to live in a world where we have zero fraud on the platform, and this has been a very effective tool. Increasing the penalties takes the money from people who are cheating and puts it back into the system for those who aren’t.”

Apple Music’s efforts to crack down on streaming fraud follow similar crackdowns on such actions by Spotify and Deezer. Last month, the latter revealed that 85% of AI-generated music streams have been demonitised on the platform.

Last September, Spotify revealed that it had removed 75 million ‘spam’ tracks from the streaming service.