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French streaming service Deezer said streams of AI-generated music on its platform were dominated by fraudsters, who upload and then repeatedly listen to thousands of songs to generate royalty payments to the detriment of legitimate artists.
The Paris-listed group, which on Wednesday posted its first net profit since being founded almost two decades ago, said that fraudsters were responsible for more than 80 per cent of all streams of AI-generated music.
Every fraudulent stream only generates a small amount of money, but Deezer chief executive Alexis Lanternier said AI made it possible to rapidly create thousands of songs. These are then played by the perpetrator’s accounts to try and game algorithms that select tracks for playlists and recommendations for Deezer’s legitimate users.
The fraudsters “manage to get a few euros or dollars [per song] and then [by] the end of the month, they make real money,” said Lanternier.
The growing threat from AI fraud was highlighted by Victoria Oakley, chief executive of music association IFPI, at the launch of its global music report on Wednesday.
“This is theft . . . uploading tracks via distributors and deploying armies of bots to create artificial plays . . . [we are] working with law enforcement to prosecute these crimes,” said Oakley, who also called on the industry to do more to stop it.
While streams of AI-generated tracks comprise only about 3 per cent of the total on Deezer, 85 per cent of these are classed as fraudulent. By comparison, fraudulent plays across Deezer’s entire catalogue accounted for about 8 per cent of all streams in 2025, the company said.
A music industry executive said that they estimated songs created for fraudulent streaming accounted for around 5-10% of content across all streaming platforms. Tools including Suno and Udio can generate an entire song from a single prompt in a matter of seconds.
More than 13mn tracks were detected and tagged as being created by AI on Deezer in 2025. The rate of uploads is accelerating, with over 60,000 AI tracks now being added to its platform a day, equal to about 39 per cent of the daily intake.
When tracks are detected as fraudulent they are removed from the royalty pool, which is shared among all artists and songwriters on Deezer’s platform.
Lanternier said Deezer did not know the identity of the fraudsters and that it was focusing on AI detection to determine which tracks were made legitimately with AI tools.
In results published after market close on Wednesday, the French streamer said that revenues fell 1.4 per cent to €534mn for the full year.
Full-year adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation were €10mn — from a €4mn loss the previous year. Net income for the company was €9mn, the first positive result since Deezer was founded in 2007. Lanternier said this was “obviously an exciting achievement, although you would say it’s a bit late”.
The group’s main shareholders include Sir Leonard Blavatnik’s Access Industries, French telecoms group Orange and the Pinault family.
Deezer, which competes with larger rivals such as Spotify and Apple Music, counts France and Brazil as its largest markets. It offers its streaming services in more than 180 countries to consumers and acts as a “white label” provider of streaming platforms to companies.
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