UMG is hiring for a Vice President, Global Head of Fraud Prevention

Universal Music Group is hiring for a Vice President, Global Head of Fraud Prevention, based in Los Angeles, New York, the UK, or Germany.

That’s according to a job ad, spotted by MBW, in which UMG writes that streaming fraud and copyright fraud are “existential threats” to the music industry and that its fraud prevention team is “leading the industry by example” in fighting fraudsters.

UMG’s ad describes the position as a “critical role”.

The ad notes that the successful candidate “will lead day-to-day operations and oversee a team focused on investigating stream manipulations and copyright infringement, including a strategic copyright infringement lead, a [manager] responsible for coordination across all internal labels and external DSP partners, and a team of specialized data analysts to help investigate and document fraud threats”.

The prevention of streaming fraud is high up on the agenda of music industry leaders – and it’s not hard to see why. With the rise of AI in music production, streaming manipulation is becoming increasingly sophisticated.

Last year, Beatdapp estimated that streaming fraud takes some $2 billion per year out of the pockets of legitimate rightsholders, as bot-powered fake streams rack up the stream counts that determine who gets paid by streaming services.

(UMG partnered with the fraud-detection platform in January last year. Beatdapp uses “sophisticated fraud detection filters” to detect stream manipulation.)

Meanwhile, over 1 million manipulated tracks are estimated to exist on major streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and TIDAL, according to Pex‘s analysis of copyrighted content. Some of these tracks have garnered millions of listens.

There have been a couple of high-profile cases in recent months regarding individuals accused of and/or sentenced for committing streaming fraud.

In March last year, for example, a man in Denmark was found guilty of data fraud and copyright infringement after using bots to artificially inflate the stream count on 689 tracks he had uploaded to streaming services including Apple Music, Spotify, and YouSee Musik.

Earlier this year, the individual, who was convicted of orchestrating one of the largest streaming fraud schemes saw his sentence raised to 24 months from 18 months.

Meanwhile, in the US, a North Carolina musician was indicted in September for allegedly generating over $10 million in fraudulent royalties using “hundreds of thousands of…