UMG is hiring for a Vice President, Global Head of Fraud Prevention – Music Business Worldwide

Universal Music Group is hiring for a Vice President, Global Head of Fraud Prevention, based in Los Angeles, New York, the UK, or Germany.

That’s according to a job ad, spotted by MBW, in which UMG writes that streaming fraud and copyright fraud are “existential threats” to the music industry and that its fraud prevention team is “leading the industry by example” in fighting fraudsters.

UMG’s ad describes the position as a “critical role”.

The ad notes that the successful candidate “will lead day-to-day operations and oversee a team focused on investigating stream manipulations and copyright infringement, including a strategic copyright infringement lead, a [manager] responsible for coordination across all internal labels and external DSP partners, and a team of specialized data analysts to help investigate and document fraud threats”.

The prevention of streaming fraud is high up on the agenda of music industry leaders – and it’s not hard to see why. With the rise of AI in music production, streaming manipulation is becoming increasingly sophisticated.

Last year, Beatdapp estimated that streaming fraud takes some $2 billion per year out of the pockets of legitimate rightsholders, as bot-powered fake streams rack up the stream counts that determine who gets paid by streaming services.

(UMG partnered with the fraud-detection platform in January last year. Beatdapp uses “sophisticated fraud detection filters” to detect stream manipulation.)

Meanwhile, over 1 million manipulated tracks are estimated to exist on major streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and TIDAL, according to Pex‘s analysis of copyrighted content. Some of these tracks have garnered millions of listens.

There have been a couple of high-profile cases in recent months regarding individuals accused of and/or sentenced for committing streaming fraud.

In March last year, for example, a man in Denmark was found guilty of data fraud and copyright infringement after using bots to artificially inflate the stream count on 689 tracks he had uploaded to streaming services including Apple Music, Spotify, and YouSee Musik.

Earlier this year, the individual, who was convicted of orchestrating one of the largest streaming fraud schemes saw his sentence raised to 24 months from 18 months.

Meanwhile, in the US, a North Carolina musician was indicted in September for allegedly generating over $10 million in fraudulent royalties using “hundreds of thousands of songs” and bot accounts.

“UMG’s fraud prevention team is leading the industry by example in fighting the existential threats of streaming fraud and copyright fraud.”

Universal job ad

According to UMG’s job ad for the Vice President, Global Head of Fraud Prevention role, the successful candidate will be required to “envisage and deploy fraud detection systems and current process enhancements.”

According to the ad, the successful candidate will also focus on “oversee[ing] implementation of contractual fraud commitments, partner engagement, data and reporting”, as well as “foster[ing] third-party partnerships” with technology companies. 

Plus, this role will serve as “the public face and voice of UMG’s fraud efforts”, and will “Evangelize and Engage In Public Forums, With Trade Bodies and Industry Groups as UMG lead for fraud-related research projects”.

The successful candidate will be required to present at trade shows and conferences and publish white papers based on their findings.

This person will need “at least 5 years’ experience at a major record label or DSP” and “working experience with copyright, content protection, different types of fraud threats (specifically stream manipulation and copyright infringement).”

They will also need “an operational understanding of the digital music landscape and ecosystem” plus “extensive data management and analytical experience to spot trends in fraud and purvey actionable insight.”

Universal Music Group has been highly vocal in recent years about its intention to stamp out streaming fraud.

Back in January 2023, in an all-staff memo, UMG Chairman and CEO Sir Lucian Grainge introduced UMG’s ‘artist-centric’ strategy, which pushed for updates to the payout models at DSPS. Grainge also called out “bad actors who do not share our commitment to artists and artistry”.

He added: “The current environment has attracted players who see an economic opportunity in flooding platforms with all sorts of irrelevant content that deprives both artists and labels from the compensation they deserve“.

In September 2023, a UMG-approved ‘artist-centric’ model arrived at Deezer. The platform also pledged to tackle streaming fraud, by “continuing to drive an updated, and stricter, proprietary fraud detection system, removing incentives for bad actors, and protecting streaming royalties for artists”.

Spotify also embraced elements of UMG’s ‘artist-centric’ royalties model as part of major changes to its own service launched in Q1 last year, which included various fraud-prevention measures.

Writing in his most recent New Year memo (published in January 2025) – in which Grainge confirmed the arrival of what he calls “the Streaming 2.0 era” – he noted that UMG’s “work in driving these artist-centric principles will continue in 2025”.

He said: “When we introduced that strategy two years ago, we immediately went to work with our partners to make it a reality.  In a matter of months, we reached agreements in principle on a number of issues: increasing the monetization of artists’ music; limiting the gaming of the system by protecting against fraud and content saturation; and focusing on the value of authentic artist-fan relationships, inspiring the development of more engaging consumer experiences, including specially designed new products and premium tiers for superfans.

“Platforms as diverse as Deezer, Spotify, TikTok, Meta and most recently Amazon, have adopted artist-centric principles in a wide variety of ways — principles that benefit the entire music industry from DIY to independent to major label artists and songwriters.”

Grainge continued: “Not only do we want to ensure that artists are protected and rewarded, but we’re also going after bad actors who are actively engaged in nefarious behavior such as large-scale copyright infringement.”

He also revealed that UMG is “setting forth the best practices that every responsible platform, distributor and aggregator should adopt: content filtering; checks for infringement across streaming and social platforms; penalty systems for repeat infringers; chain-of-custody certification and name-and-likeness verification”.

Added Grainge in his 2025 memo, published in January: “If every platform, distributor and aggregator were to adopt these measures and commit to continue to employ the latest technology to thwart bad actors, we would create an environment in which artists will reach more fans, have more economic and creative opportunities, and dramatically diminish the sea of noise and irrelevant content that threatens to drown out artists’ voices.”Music Business Worldwide