Streaming fraud, artificial intelligence, the weight of Spotify and the future of the charts. These are some of the themes that Enzo MazzaCEO of FIMI (Italian Music Industry Federation), addressed in a long interview with ours Alvise Salerno in an episode of Music Teller.
A direct confrontation, which lasted over an hour, in which the federation's number one explained how the Italian rankings really work and what challenges await them.
Below are the main steps. The full interview is available in the video at the bottom of the article.
Fraud and streaming manipulation: millions of streams deleted every week
The first theme is that of the so-called streaming manipulationfraud linked to artificially inflated ratings. Club he describes it as a global issue, with two sides: on the one hand the attempt to climb the charts, on the other, even more serious, the subtraction of royalties from the legitimate rights holders.
According to the CEO of FIMI, the phenomenon has been monitored for some time and a large part of the suspicious ratings are removed upstream, before the publication of the Friday rankings:
“There are millions of songs and millions of streams that are regularly deleted on the Friday before the charts are published because they are suspicious.”
Mazza specifies that the rankings now manage around two billion streams a week in Italy alone, and that checks on suspected cases are primarily the responsibility of the platforms, the only entities capable of intervening effectively, in addition to the checks of the chart compiler (now NielsenIQ, after the merger with GfK). When asked by Alvise how a user can be sure that the top 100 is 100% real, Mazza admits that the use of bot farms cannot be completely ruled out, but assures that anomalies, when they emerge, are checked and eliminated, almost always preventively.
Artificial intelligence: the new FIMI rules are coming
One of the most relevant passages concerns the new rules on artificial intelligencewhich FIMI is preparing to publish in the coming weeks. The guiding principle will be that of human contribution:
“Human Centric is our motto globally. Music tracks in which the human contribution is relevant will enter the charts, those 100% AI will not.”
Mazza explains that the platforms will have to introduce a labeling system, i.e. a clear indication of the songs created with artificial intelligence, and that the collaboration of the platforms on this front will have to be more incisive, as already requested for streaming manipulation. The declared objective is to safeguard the remuneration of real artists, avoiding the scenario in which a platform could one day only broadcast music generated by AI without recognizing rights. The issue of how to measure the “prevalent human contribution” remains open, which according to Mazza will be a matter of discussion and probably also of future sentences.
The friendly clash on the radio charts
As a radio expert, Alvise brought the point of view of the radios, asking if the radio results could one day be included in the FIMI rankings. The answer of Club is clear: the radio rankings are not sales or consumption rankings, because the passages are decided by the broadcasters.
“If Radio Italia plays a song 100 times, that song goes to first place.”
For this reason, the CEO of FIMI claims, it would not be coherent to include them in a ranking based on real consumption, where caps and conversion rates apply instead. A confrontation that always remained cordial, in which the two sides recognized their respective reasons.
TikTok and Reel towards the charts?
Among the possible future developments, Club opens up to the inclusion of short form videos, therefore TikTok, Reel and the like, as a new form of music consumption, after the integration of YouTube videos which took place a few years ago. The reason is generational:
“Generation alpha, the latest generation, actually consumes music through TikTok.”
A fact which, if confirmed by analyses, could push towards a revision of the way in which audiences are measured.
The video interview with Enzo Mazza
During the long confrontation, Club and Alvise touched on many other topics: the historic issue of singles taken from albums occupying the charts (and the proposal for a double chart), the real weight of Spotify (which in much of Italy, underlines Mazza, is less dominant than YouTube Free), the 20-30 million users who listen to free music and the cultural issue of the lack of propensity to pay for content, the growth of the physical market driven by super fans and the D2C of record companies, up to the functioning of the sales panel and curiosities about the covers wrong in the ranking.
The complete interview with the CEO of FIMI is available below.
