Artist Rights Institute wants upload checks before streaming royalties are split

A check before the upload, not after

ARI's comments answer a public inquiry requested by US Representative Scott Fitzgerald. He has raised concerns about policy affecting songwriters. The group says the problem runs wider than fraudulent streams. It argues that AI-generated recordings, unauthorised copies and hijacked artist identities arrive through distributors that do not verify enough.

If distributors must verify uploaders and royalty recipients, money shifts toward rights holders who can document their claims. It shifts away from bulk uploaders. Artists and small labels gain a paper trail. Distributors and AI music companies face new costs and delays. Nobody has published how much of the pool is actually diverted.

Its proposed approach is: "Know the customer. Know the content. Follow the money." In practice, distributors would verify uploaders, ownership claims and who ultimately receives royalties before they accept a recording. That replaces algorithms or royalty thresholds at the service. ARI says flat-fee distributors have no incentive to vet users. It argues the structure could warrant investigation under the RICO statute. It proposes a per-stream mechanical royalty to align incentives with fraud prevention. The comment period stays open until 23 November.

Why the pool is the battleground

The backdrop is a business still growing at the top. Universal Music Group reported third-quarter 2026 revenue of 3.394 billion euros on 29 October, up 12.3% year on year. Revenue from paid accounts in recorded music rose 19.2%. Universal Music Group attributed that rise to higher wholesale prices and more subscribers.

IFPI's Global Music Report 2026, published on 18 March 2026, put 2025 recorded music revenue at 31.7 billion dollars. That was up 6.4% and an 11th consecutive year of growth. Streaming contributed more than 22 billion dollars, or 69.6% of the total. The paid services segment reported 837 million subscribers worldwide. Streamshare divides that pool. ARI says fraudulent streams cut legitimate artists' shares without necessarily raising the services' costs.

The subpoena fight over AI data

Universal Music Group, Sony Music and DistroKid said they "are working on a resolution" in their dispute over DistroKid's AI music data. They said this in a joint filing approved in a Manhattan federal court on 28 October. The labels gave DistroKid until 6 November to respond. They moved the deadline from 4 November, Digital Music News reported on 29 October.

The labels want monthly figures on how many tracks DistroKid delivered to streaming services. They also want figures on how many were flagged as AI-generated, how many of those were attributed to Suno, and total streams and royalties on flagged recordings. DistroKid says it distributes 30 to 40% of all new music in the world.

The subpoena belongs to the labels' copyright suit against Suno. The labels first filed that suit in June 2024, and it covers 560 recordings. The labels seek up to 150,000 dollars per work, a theoretical maximum of around 84 million dollars. A second suit followed in September, covering 60,202 further recordings. At the same ceiling, that is a theoretical maximum of just over 9 billion dollars. Suno is separately fighting to make an Apple witness testify about Apple Music's licensing talks with the majors and about streaming fraud there.

Growth at the top, erosion underneath

Not every corner of streaming is expanding. Pandora's monthly active users fell to 38.81 million at the end of September, down 6.6% from 41.56 million a year earlier. That is according to parent SiriusXM's third-quarter results published on 29 October. Self-pay subscribers fell 177,000 year on year to 5.51 million. Ad-supported listener hours dropped 10% to 2.25 billion.

SiriusXM's revenue share and royalty costs rose 5 million dollars to 726 million dollars. That was 33.7% of total revenue, up from 33.4% a year earlier. Consolidated revenue slipped to 2.153 billion dollars from 2.159 billion dollars. The company blamed a 16% fall in equipment revenue.

The gap is wider in India. Ormax Media's September 2026 public summary estimates 227.3 million monthly audio streamers there. Of those, 15 million pay, about 6.6%.

Better data, and who pays for it

PRS for Music partnered with Soundtrack, a streaming service for businesses, to receive play-by-play data from around 7,000 UK premises. Those premises include Uniqlo, Dr Martens and Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts. PRS will begin feeding that data into royalty distributions from December 2026.

Collection societies also differ in what they keep. COSOTA, Tanzania's copyright society, states that 70% of collected licence fees goes to rights holders and 30% to administrative costs. Its distribution classes cover broadcasting, public performance in commercial premises, and film projection and commercial lending of video recordings.

The common thread is measurement before payment.