An algorithm designed to make the music industry fairer

© Vienna University of Technology

When music is electronically distributed, it is hardly possible to precisely check sales figures. This issue has occupied the music industry for years.

Up until now, music labels and bands have been forced to rely on large music platforms to pass on correct figures and pay correct fees. A technology developed by the Vienna University of Technology is now designed to provide greater clarity. The statistician Nermina Mumic developed mathematical tools in cooperation with Professor Peter Filzmoser and Radostina Kostadinova enabling fraudsters to be identified with a high degree of reliability. In this way, the music industry should become more transparent and fairer.

Nermina Mumic of the Institute of Statistics and Mathematical Methods in Economics of the Vienna University of Technology has analyzed huge data records with more than 100 million individual observations from the music industry. The result of this research work is a tool to combat fraud which could revolutionize the music industry. Original data from the music industry was manipulated on a trial basis in order to test the new statistical tools. “Our software detected more than 92 percent of the cases of manipulation”, says Mumic. “This is an extremely good rate and we believe we can improve it even more.” The only possibility to outsmart the software would be an agreement on the part of all music providers across the globe to falsify all data in a precisely aligned manner, and this is extremely unrealistic.