Apple Music doubles the penalty for fraudulent streaming

Chance Miller | Feb 11 2026 - 10:28 am PT

Fraudulent streaming is a long-running problem in the music business. In a recent interview, Oliver Schusser, who oversees Apple Music, Apple TV, and more, offered some fascinating insight into Apple’s work to crack down on fake streams on Apple Music.

The report also reveals that Apple recently doubled the penalty for Apple Music fraud …

Apple Music’s fraud crackdown continues, here’s how

The most obvious example of streaming fraud is where a musician or label uses a network of bots to constantly stream their music 24/7 in order to earn royalties. There are, however, a number of other strategies that have emerged over the years — including manipulation designed to boost chart performance.

Apple introduced fraud penalties on Apple Music in 2022 and has continued to crack down in recent years. In 2023, for instance, the company touted that it had cut down on streaming manipulation by 30%.

Apple’s strategy in squashing Apple Music fraud consists of a sliding scale of fines, as explained by The Hollywood Reporter. When it was first implemented, the fee was 5% and capped at 25%. As of this month, however, Apple has doubled the fee. It now starts at 10% and is capped at 50%.

“In layman’s terms, if you engage in streaming fraud amounting to say, $1 million, you’d be fined a maximum $500,000,” the report explains. This is in addition to demonetizing the fraudulent streams themselves.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter recently, Schusser elaborated on Apple’s efforts to reduce fraud on Apple Music:

“This is a zero-sum game. 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 “removed billions of manipulated streams from the service in 2025 alone,” Schusser elaborated. “Most of our competitors are really struggling with this. It’s a bit of Whack a Mole,” he said, suggesting that Spotify and other streaming services face similar challenges but may lack Apple’s enforcement infrastructure.

“This is a huge problem in the industry, people want to be number one in the charts. They want to make it into playlists. Despite that, you’re still talking about billions of manipulated streams, just in last year alone. And we really felt like that the penalty had helped in 2022.

“It’s really just to focus on quality, that’s all it is. We look at ourselves as a quality platform, and we don’t like it when people cheat, and we like to give it back to those who don’t cheat.”

You can read Schusser’s full interview on The Hollywood Reporter’s website.

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