Why this policy exists
Fraud in music distribution is not a victimless technicality. Artificial streams take money out of a royalty pool that every other artist is paid from, impersonation steals an audience someone else built, and a distributor that tolerates either gets its whole catalogue throttled or removed by the stores. Artists who play it straight pay for it.
So Run takes a hard line, and states it in advance. This policy applies to everyone using Run and to every release delivered through it. It sits alongside our Terms of Service and Distribution Agreement; breaching it breaches both.
Artificial streaming
Artificial streaming is any play, save, follow or share that does not come from a real person listening because they want to. You may not use, buy, commission or benefit from it, whether you arrange it yourself or someone does it on your behalf. It counts as artificial streaming when it involves:
- bots, scripts, emulators, click farms or automated playback of any kind;
- paid-per-stream services, “stream packages”, guaranteed-playlist placements and follower or save sellers, including ones that describe themselves as marketing or promotion;
- playlists built to loop tracks for accounts that are not listening, or coordinated stream-swap groups;
- multiple accounts, devices or VPNs used to inflate your own numbers, and incentives that pay people to stream;
- tracks engineered purely to farm plays: silent or near-silent audio, functional noise uploaded in bulk, and releases cut to game a minimum-play threshold.
A promoter promising a number of streams is selling you artificial streaming, whatever the listing says, and you are responsible for what services you buy. Genuine advertising, PR, playlist pitching that does not guarantee placements, and organic promotion are all fine.
Impersonation and identity abuse
Nothing on Run may pass you off as someone else. That includes:
- releasing under another artist’s name, or a name chosen to be confused with theirs;
- delivering to a store profile that is not yours, or claiming a profile you do not control, which is the most common way a catalogue gets hijacked;
- crediting a featured artist, producer or writer who is not on the track, whether to borrow their audience or their search traffic;
- artwork, photos or biographies that present you as an artist you are not, or that suggest an endorsement that does not exist.
Common names happen honestly, and we would rather sort that out before delivery than after a claim. Tell us when you submit and we will look at it with you.
Metadata and discovery manipulation
Store search and recommendation are the shelf your music sits on, and metadata written to game them makes that shelf useless for everyone. Not allowed:
- keyword stuffing in titles, artist names or version fields: other artists’ names, store or playlist names, genre spam, or search terms bolted onto a title;
- misleading titles and version tags, including calling a track a remix, live version, sped-up or slowed version of a work it is not;
- type-beat exploits and bulk uploads of near-identical tracks generated to occupy search results;
- deliberately wrong barcodes or ISRCs, or resubmitting the same recording as a new release to reset its position.
AI misuse
Run is openly pro-AI, and that position only survives if AI music on Run is disclosed and original. Fraudulent AI use means:
- declaring less AI involvement than is really there, on the artwork, the recording or the composition;
- voice clones, soundalikes and deepfake vocals, and any use of an identifiable artist’s voice or likeness without explicit written consent and a signed agreement;
- models trained to reproduce a specific protected work, and output that does so;
- mass-produced AI catalogues uploaded to farm plays rather than to be listened to, and contributor credits invented to satisfy the human-contributor rule.
Disclosed AI music, including fully AI-generated music with an original, non-impersonating voice, is welcome and always has been. The offence is the lie, not the tool.
Rights and clearance fraud
Submitting music you do not have the rights to is fraud against the person who does. That covers uploading someone else’s recording as your own, re-releasing a catalogue you no longer control, forged or altered clearance documents and split sheets, splits entered for writers who never agreed to them, and public-domain claims for recordings that are still protected.
Account and payment abuse
Also prohibited: opening additional accounts to get around a plan limit, a rejection or a suspension; sharing or selling account access; chargebacks used to keep a service already delivered; and any attempt to break, overload or probe the service or to reach data that is not yours.
How we detect it
Before a release ships, and after it goes live:
- Every track is fingerprinted. Submitted audio is matched against a third-party reference database to surface existing recordings, undisclosed covers and samples, and impersonation attempts.
- Metadata and files are checked against store requirements and against our own rules on titles, credits, contributor coverage and splits.
- Identity is cross-checked against the store profiles connected to your artists, so a delivery does not land on someone else’s page.
- People review what the checks flag. No account is closed and no release is rejected purely by an automated score.
- We act on what the stores tell us. Platforms and our distribution partner report artificial-streaming findings and rights complaints back to us, and those land in front of a reviewer.
We do not describe our thresholds in detail, for the obvious reason. We also do not rely on detection alone: the rules above apply whether or not we catch a given instance.
What happens when we find it
What we do depends on what happened and whether it looks deliberate:
- Hold and ask. A release stops before delivery and we ask you for the document, the correction or the explanation.
- Rejection. The release does not ship, and you are told why.
- Takedown. A live release is pulled from every store it reached, which for impersonation and rights claims we do as fast as we can.
- Earnings withheld or reversed. Earnings attributed to artificial streaming can be withheld, reversed, or charged back to your account when a platform or our distribution partner rejects or reclaims them, including any fee they levy for it.
- Suspension or closure. Deliberate or repeated fraud ends the account, and we may decline to work with you again. We tell you why, in writing, and the addresses a closed account signed in from stay on our denylist, so a new account opened from one of them is flagged for review rather than passing unnoticed.
- Referral. Where the law requires it, or where a rights holder pursues a claim, we cooperate with stores, rights holders and authorities.
Buying streams is not a small mistake we let slide because the release is doing well. It is the one thing most likely to end an account outright.
Appeals
If you think we got it wrong, reply to the decision or write to legal@run.audio with the release and anything that supports your case: invoices for promotion you bought, clearance documents, proof you control the profile, or the story of where the streams came from. A person reads it. Where the problem can be fixed, you fix it and resubmit.
Reporting fraud to us
If a release distributed through Run infringes your rights, impersonates you, or looks like stream manipulation, tell us at legal@run.audio. Include enough to identify the release (a store link, the title and artist, the barcode or ISRC if you have it), what the problem is, and how to reach you. We are the single point of contact for everything distributed through us, so it does not need to go through the stores first.