How IFPI CEO Victoria Oakley Is Tackling AI & Streaming Fraud Head-On: ‘We’ve Got Work to Do’
Categoria: Musica
More than two years after assuming the role, Oakley discusses the "collaborative process" she feels is needed to solve the industry's most pressing issues.
Por Billboard | 05/11/2026
This June, IFPI sprang into action. The trade organization for the recorded-music business around the world is best known for its annual Global Music Reports, which track annual economic growth and development for the industry by country and region. But that month, it launched the first of three initiatives intended to tackle issues it sees as critical to the health of the global business: tagging and identifying AI-generated songs on streaming services; disqualifying AI-generated songs from its 60-plus international charts; and combating streaming fraud. Related IFPI Launches Initiative to Combat Streaming Fraud The measures were a relatively rare foray into consumer and business practices for the organization, which traditionally spends the majority of its efforts on government lobbying for legal protections for the creative industry and infrastructure support for the industry in developing regions. But for Victoria Oakley , who became CEO of IFPI in April 2024 after a decades-long career in British diplomacy and corporate consulting, the rapid advancement of technology, particularly AI, has made such industrywide consensus-building essential. “I think music at this period in its evolution, with the challenges and opportunities that it’s facing, the real mix between tech, creativity, business and government, is a complex and really important blend right now,” says Oakley, who spent 18 years in the British Foreign Office before stints advising companies like Google, Apple and McDonald’s prior to IFPI. “I didn’t want to go to a trade body that argues about a press release that nobody really wants to issue. I wanted to come and do lobbying and advocacy and storytelling for an industry that I think matters.” This year in particular, the music industry has confronted challenges that teeter on the existential, none more so than AI, which both offers huge creative potential and very real risks to the streaming business model and trust of consumers. And while the broader AI conversation is much bigger than music, Oakley is determined to make sure the sector doesn’t get lost in the shuffle. “In the regulatory and political world, I think music is a sector that’s beloved but not particularly thought about or understood, and that’s because we haven’t told our story,” Oakley says. “But we’re now at a time where AI is not coming; it’s here. And we need to be able to use AI as an opportunity for music, but also we need governments to help us build the right systems and guardrails so that music can continue to thrive in a Gen AI world.” Since you took over, AI has been a major focus in many different ways. It is a gigantic topic, of course. What are some of your major concerns there? I think having either this fear or this binary sense of what AI means for music or for the music industry isn’t very helpful. I think what’s quite impressive about music is