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An Arrest in Brazil Highlights Country Music’s Deep Struggles With Streaming Fraud
Brazilian country music's streaming streaming fraud issues were exposed after the arrest of sertanejo artist Alex Ronaldo over a Spotify scheme.
“Simply put, streaming manipulation of this nature is theft — stealing directly from artists and betraying fans,” Victoria Oakley, the CEO of IFPI in London, said in a statement last week. Last year it grew 21.7% to 3.49 billion reais ($609 million) to land in ninth place on IFPI’s global ranking (88% of revenues came from on-demand streams), despite the country’s currency remaining historically weak compared to the U.S. dollar. Torres de Souza ran the computers 24 hours a day, only disconnecting them when he traveled to avoid starting a fire, Fabrício Lamas, a prosecutor with Goiânia’s cybercrime unit, CyberGaeco, tells Billboard.
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