Veriff and EMD: helping a music distribution pioneer return trust to the music business

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About EMD

Emergence Music Distribution (EMD) is a worldwide digital music distribution company focused on helping independent artists place their music on digital streaming platforms (DSPs) including Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok, YouTube and Amazon Music. As well as acting as a ‘middleman’ connecting artists with DSPs and collecting royalties on their behalf, EMD offers digital artist development services, including graphic design, marketing and PR, aimed at empowering artists to maximize their revenue opportunities. Founded in Canada in 2020, in the past two years EMD has opened offices in Ecuador and expanded its territories in South America, Europe and Africa.

What business problem did Veriff solve for EMD?

Fraud is a rapidly growing problem in digital music distribution. September 2024 saw the highest profile case to date hit the headlines, when a North Carolina man was charged with the first criminal case in the US involving ‘artificially inflated music streaming’. The scam involved using AI to ‘write’ hundreds of thousands of songs, then stream them using bot-controlled accounts to generate royalty payments totaling more than US$10 million.

“Now you have AI creating songs,” comments EMD Co-Founder and President David-Olivier St-Pierre Garcia. “If you are a streaming platform, for example, how do you know who you are paying and if they are a real artist? Should I put them on my distribution platform?”

EMD’s business model is built around a fully online approach, ensuring efficient service while keeping costs down for their artists in a notoriously low-margin sector. 

“EMD is fully digital, so we don’t have face-to-face contact with our clients, everything goes through the platform,” explains David. “Sometimes it’s hard for us to be sure the artist who opens an account is a real person.”

This has the potential to hit EMD directly in the pocket, as streaming platforms have begun to impose fines or even threaten to stop dealing with distributors who fail to ensure their clients are genuine artists. To avoid fraudulent use of its platform, EMD therefore needed to be able to quickly and efficiently confirm the identity of the person registering and creating an account. Veriff provided the solution. 

What made the difference to EMD when choosing Veriff?

When the issue of fake clients started to emerge, EMD initially had no choice but to try to contact and verify the identity of the owners of suspicious accounts individually. This was time-consuming and often inconclusive. Employing Veriff’s identity verification (IDV) solution meant EMD could confirm the identity of clients almost immediately and with a high degree of accuracy. 

“By using Veriff at the first step, right away we can resolve these issues,” says David. “Even if one day somebody tries to duplicate an account, we can identify that and prevent it.”   

Another key consideration was that Veriff’s global reach and comprehensive ID database gave EMD the potential to expand its footprint easily and take on new artists no matter where they were based.

“That was really important for us because there was no point if the company was just operating in North America or a couple of countries,” says David. “Veriff’s coverage is worldwide in almost every country.”

In David’s view, a further benefit of partnering with Veriff has to do with reputation and EMD’s ambitions to make music streaming fairer and more accessible for all. Put simply, identity verification helps build trust.

“We care about artists, we care about the music industry, we want to make sure this industry is healthy, and I think everyone has to do their part,” explains David. “Using Veriff makes a strong statement about who we are and what’s important to us.”

What was the impact of implementing Veriff?

Implementing Veriff’s IDV solution delivered immediate results for EMD, both in terms of speed and accuracy.

“Using Veriff really helped us,” says David. “When artists open an account with us now, right away Veriff can eliminate a good 90% of the issues.” 

Prior to partnering with Veriff, EMD had to spend time and resources on resolving issues around identity verification with artists.

“Every time we had to manually contact the artist, we had to wait perhaps two, three days for them to answer,” comments David. “Now, an artist’s identity is confirmed in less than a minute, even 30 seconds.”

At the same time, taking clear steps to counter fraud helps build confidence and trust in EMD, both with the streaming platforms and with the artists themselves.

“Our reputation is better, on the business side and also in terms of our relationships with our clients,” comments David. “Artists now say, if I go with this company, I’m not going to have an issue that somebody, even another platform, says I’m fake. That is the main point: we exist to help artists make a living from their work and if we can verify their identity and help them to get paid then we know we are doing something right.”

About Veriff

Veriff is the preferred identity verification partner for the world’s biggest and best digital companies, including pioneers in fintech, crypto, gaming, and the mobility sectors. We provide advanced technology, deep insights, and expertise from our foundation in digital-first Estonia and honed in leading the digital identity revolution. The partner of choice for businesses who need to verify online users rapidly and effortlessly from anywhere in the world, Veriff delivers the widest possible identity document coverage. 

By supporting government-issued IDs from more than 230 issuing countries and territories and with our intelligent decision engine which analyzes thousands of technological and behavioral variables Veriff enables trust from the first hello. With more than 550 people from 60 different nationalities and offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, and Estonia, we are dedicated to helping businesses and individuals build a safer and more secure online world.