Meet the Vancouver firm protecting artists from AI music fraud

Andrew Batey and Morgan Hayduk believe they have an answer to the surge in music fraud. They are co-founders of Vancouver-based technology company Beatdapp and recently launched a new service, Beatdapp’s AI Music Detection Suite, that scans uploaded content for music generated by artificial intelligence.

Beatdapp first built its business around its Trust and Safety Operating System that includes a wide range of services from Anomaly Detection to Customer Due Diligence to Account Takeover Detection—all designed to protects customer’s money and data.

The pair have been involved in the music industry for years. Batey has experience filing patents and promoting artists on various platforms. Hayduk helped advocacy group Music Canada extend copyright protections and protect artists from fraud schemes. They have both seen AI remove roadblocks for bad actors.

“The hard part was getting the music. AI has eliminated that,” said Batey. “Within a push now, they can get pretty decent music that sounds very similar to real music [en] mass.

Fraudsters can take advantage of the system in simple ways, siphoning money away from real creatives. Batey explains that scammers aim to fly under the radar by getting only a few thousand plays on millions of AI created tracks. Hayduk says fraudsters also operate by asserting ownership over content and hoping no one notices.

“[You] come in and say [you] own 1 percent of this and 10 percent of that, and you just sort of spray and pray and hope that the [publisher] doesn’t recognize that you’re a malicious user making false claims, and you get paid.”

Built on trust

Chris Norwood is the Chief Strategy Officer at Nettwerk Music Group, a Vancouver based record label that has been working with Beatdapp for the past four years. The relationship grew out of conversations that began before the pandemic, when industry leaders were starting to confront the scale and sophistication of streaming fraud.

“We’ve been working with them both in understanding what this might mean for our artists and making sure that we’re identifying where that might be happening within our catalogue,” Norwood said.

Nettwerk has also played a role in helping bring Beatdapp’s tools to major digital service providers such as Spotify, Amazon and Apple Music—platforms where fraud can be difficult to detect at scale.

Norwood notes that the streaming economy’s complex payment structures can create opportunities for bad actors. That makes education and transparency just as important as detection technology.

“The way that we’ve been supporting [Beatdapp] is giving them a platform, a way of kind of shining a light on this,” he said. “The way that we solve [this problem] is by people understanding just what we’re trying to solve.”

Knowledge is power

Batey and Hayduk are careful to emphasize that they are not opposed to artificial intelligence itself. Their goal, they say, is transparency—ensuring artists, publishers and listeners have the information they need to understand what they’re hearing.

“We don’t want to be in the business of enforcing the business rules,” Hayduk said. “We just want to enable our clients to make the decisions that are best for their platform.”

He points to the case of American country artist Randy Travis, who released new material after losing much of his voice following a 2013 stroke. His label used AI trained on Travis’s earlier recordings to recreate his vocal sound, allowing him to finish and share previously unfinished work.

“Should that music be allowed on streaming services? I would think so,” Hayduk said. “I think that’s wonderful. I think it’s an awesome way to use technology, to give someone back their voice, literally.”

Norwood said that perspective is shared at Nettwerk, where the priority remains supporting artists. The label is open to creators using AI as a tool to enhance their work—but draws a clear distinction when the technology is used to siphon revenue away from real musicians.

“Artists use a variety of tools in order to come up with music, and we want to make sure the tools they’re using are appropriate and remunerate the artists appropriately for the work,” Norwood said. “We’re not necessarily limiting them as long as those tools are appropriate and licensed.”

Privacy by design

Batey and Hayduk stressed that while Beatdapp collects detailed signals—such as battery life, device orientation and app activity—to detect suspicious behaviour, the data remains fully anonymized. They say the company does not collect personally identifiable information (PII), nor does it sell or use data for marketing purposes.

“We take no PII. We don’t even store it,” said Batey. “But what’s important is we’re able to access a level of data that nobody has, and we have it at scale. It’s a massive data set that isn’t readily available to third parties because of our promise to our partners.”

Norwood said Nettwerk is closely attuned to how that data is handled, emphasizing that privacy safeguards are central to the partnership.

“It’s something that we’re talking about all the time and being very mindful how we monitor and measure it,” he said. “The fact that the data is anonymized means it’s not something they would be able to trace back to this individual or that individual.”

The detectives behind the data

Batey and Hayduk know that catching fraudsters doesn’t necessarily deter them—if anything, it often pushes them to evolve. That reality makes Beatdapp’s work an ongoing arms race, one that depends heavily on the strength and commitment of its team.

“It’s rather humbling, as a fairly non-technical person, to see what our team has been capable of,” said Hayduk. “They are a bunch of detectives and puzzle builders.”

For Batey, Beatdapp’s advantage lies in the people behind the technology.

“Having really, really smart people has enabled us to build cutting-edge tools,” he said. “It’s not Morgan and I in the trenches. We have incredible people on our team who love music so deeply that they want to protect it.”