Barnett Klane, VP of Product at Trolley, hashing it out with team members (Photo: Trolley)
If you’re managing a music catalog, you’re also probably managing fraud, duplicated data, and missing info. But why, in 2025, is the music industry still overwhelmed with version 1.0 problems? Trolley says a big part of the problem occurs at the source, when artists are onboarded.
Bad data has a price tag, billed in the form of misdirected payments and siphoned-off fraud. But for all the industry hand-wringing over fraud, duplicated data, and mismatches, what’s the actual solution here?
Fraud is the music industry’s boogeyman and what draws the most attention. But we frequently hear that data errors are often unintentional or the result of outdated systems.
It’s a classic ‘malevolence vs. incompetence’ dichotomy, with data errors frequently rooted in the latter. That’s comforting on some level, though the end result is the same: bad data means misdirected or nonexistent royalty payments — or worse, litigation or missed licensing opportunities.
Luckily, the industry is getting smarter at managing these types of recurring issues.
According to Trolley, the fintech player handling payment and verification solutions for a growing number of music companies, a large percentage of the music industry’s issues originate at the source. That is, the initial stages when rightsholder and payment details are first collected and managed — and often only partially verified and vetted.
Digital Music News recently partnered with Trolley to broaden awareness on pressing data and royalty issues like these. “If it’s garbage in, it’s garbage out,” Barnett Klane, VP of Product at Trolley, bluntly told us. “If it’s good data being ingested, it means good data out, and the entire data ecosystem around a catalog transforms.”
Beyond the music industry, Trolley handles payment technology, account verification, and compliance for a broad number of industries. So we asked: is the music industry doing worse than other industries?
Unfortunately, the answer from them is a definite yes.
Last year, Trolley conducted a cross-industry analysis revealing a stark reality: when it comes to payments and the information surrounding them, the music industry faces a significantly higher percentage of data-related issues than other sectors, including the creator, influencer, gaming, ad tech, and freelancer economies, as well as broader marketplaces.
Specifically, Trolley observed 151% more duplicate recipient records (duplicates of the same person matched to a common unique identifier) and 189% higher general data discrepancies (data points that don’t match) in the music industry versus other sectors.
Those are enormous differences and highlight the music industry’s struggle with data-related problems in various forms, including fraud.
This less-than-stellar report card comes against an increasingly difficult industry backdrop. Labels, publishers, streaming music platforms, distributors, and music IP investors are all under scrutiny to reduce errors and eliminate fraud, particularly against the rising threat posed by AI.
The overriding goal is to increase the industry’s collective earnings by addressing fundamental data issues. But how does that happen, particularly given the persistent and growing pile of bad, missing, or fraudulent data corrupting otherwise high-earning catalogs?
“After running the cross-industry numbers, we knew we could bring the music industry closer to broader industry averages in data accuracy and reliability,” Klane explained.
At the heart of Trolley’s approach is “Trolley Trust,” an industry-agnostic payment recipient verification toolkit that includes components that are based on existing ‘Know Your Customer’ (KYC) and ‘Know Your Business’ (KYB) frameworks used in banking and other sectors. Trust relies on a broad variety of verification steps, risk scores, and account flags to ensure uploads are legit.
Under a similar framework for music, ‘Know Your Artist’ or KYA, the Trust toolkit ensures the identities of artists and rights holders are accurate and confirmed, minimizing fraudulent payments. This involves basic steps like collecting government IDs and business documents, as well as more sophisticated technologies like face matching and live ID video verification to prevent AI-powered identity fraud. Risk scores and account flags help identify suspicious activities, allowing for proactive intervention.
(For a deeper dive into Know Your Artist (KYA), go here.)
Trolley’s logic is simple. A more robust upfront verification system significantly impacts how royalties are distributed and managed, increasing efficiency and reducing fraud.
This enhances trust among stakeholders and boosts overall industry valuations and earnings. According to Trolley, cleaner data at the initial stages, thanks to Trust’s IDV, TIN matching, and watchlist screening, dramatically minimizes downstream problems.
“KYA isn’t just another compliance checkbox,” Klane relayed. “It’s our end-to-end strategy for knowing and protecting music companies and the artists they pay, powered by the Trust toolkit so every royalty reaches the right hands, every time.”
Klane also emphasized that verification and trust monitoring are ongoing processes, with a post-delivery discipline that is frequently overlooked. Detailed recipient profiles and activity tracking can also help to identify patterns associated with bot streams or artificially inflated engagement.
And what about the notorious ‘black box,’ which DMN estimates contains billions in unpaid and unmatched royalties?
On this point, it was refreshing to encounter Trolley’s optimism. When it comes to the black box, Trolley reverted to their core thesis, with better data and a more protected KYA framework offering an antidote against bad actors.
On that note, Klane is willing to put Trolley’s upfront, preventative KYA framework against any company’s post-hoc, remedial processes.
“Upstream verification is essential to protect against fraud,” Klane stressed. “By implementing robust verification systems, the music industry can move towards a more trustworthy, efficient, and transparent ecosystem. And one that finally starts to look like other industries.”
After all, what’s riskier: implementing new tools and stress-testing your systems, or letting bad data do the testing for you?
Don’t wait for fraud or bad data to test your systems. Learn how to fight it at the source—watch Trolley’s on-demand webinar: ‘Fighting music industry fraud at the source: How a new Know Your Artist approach is putting more money in the right pockets’.
