A streaming service is taking a stand on listening with the volume down

People are always looking for ways to game the system when it comes to boosting streaming numbers. An easy and common way to do this is to encourage your fans to put your music on endlessly on repeat with the volume down. If you have enough people doing that, your numbers–including the chart position of your songs–will receive a significant boost. And because it still counts as a stream, the artist gets paid.

These are known as “muted streams.” All the streaming music services know about it but only one seems to be taking a public stand. Melon, the largest domestic music streaming service in South Korea, wants this to stop.

K-pop fans are particularly active when it comes to muted streams with 7% of all weekly streams played with the volume at zero. Melon says that as of October 1, they will no longer count “streams with the volume set to zero” when it comes to compiling all their charts.

Interesting. I had no idea that the streamer could sense the volume at which songs were set. Will other DSPs follow?

(Via Music Ally)