About four months ago, Maiden voyageAn album of 1980s Iron Maiden radio recordings has suddenly gone on sale on the Coda Records website, without the legendary metal band’s permission. Andrew WylieIron Maiden’s business chief said he had contacted the band’s labels, BMG and Warner Music, in an attempt to persuade British retailers to take down the unlicensed albums, but was unsuccessful. His next contact was Kosearch.
The 75-year-old brand protection company uses artificial intelligence, image-matching software and automated takedown notices to fight pirates on retail sites including Amazon, Etsy and eBay. Maiden voyage “They were more effective at encouraging people to take down records than the record companies were. They definitely had an impact on their bottom line,” Wiley said.
(According to a Coda representative, the store Maiden voyage Iron Maiden told me the process was “very simple” and that “if there are any issues, we’ll be happy to remove it.”
For a long time, artists, managers, labels, and merchandise companies have likened online piracy to a game of whack-a-mole: lawyers would serve cease-and-desist notices on unauthorized counterfeit sellers, who would then reappear elsewhere. But in recent years, companies like Corsearch and its rival CounterFind have adopted more sophisticated methods to protect their music industry customers, taking down tens of thousands of online listings each month and employing local lawyers to invoke the U.S. trademark law known as the Lanham Act to prosecute violators.
“It’s scientific, it’s strategic, it’s got solutions.” Eric Cohenfounder of TZU Strategies, which claims to have partnered with Corsearch to remove 55,000 counterfeit listings on behalf of top musicians, says that using “robust” technology “we’re able to connect the dots between the vast majority of counterfeiters who are using multiple accounts to sell in different ways across multiple platforms.”
CorSearch has 450 employees and 5,000 clients, including top artists and music companies. “We work with law enforcement agencies with whom we’ve had relationships for 15 years,” said CorSearch’s executive vice president. Joe Chelayas he says.
Dallas-based Counterfind is more of a “boutique” company, according to its co-founder and head of business development. Rachel AronsonIn 2017, the founders announced that Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington “There was an incredible amount of counterfeiting everywhere,” Mr. Aaronson said of the time of his death, and Counterfind “took millions of dollars’ worth of counterfeiting off the market in a week,” he said.
Counterfind has since grown to 30 employees and partnered with Bravado, a Universal Music Group-owned merchandise company that represents Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish and a host of other artists. “Most of these big counterfeiters operate overseas and do print-on-demand products,” Aronson says.
Music piracy and counterfeiting is big business: Last year, U.S. Border and Customs Protection seized about $2.8 billion in pirated goods shipped from countries including China, Turkey and Canada. Jeff JampolJAM Inc., the company that manages the estates of The Doors, Janis Joplin and others, estimates that unauthorized distributors cost artists about $20,000 to $50,000 per $1 million in T-shirt sales per year. “It’s never-ending,” says Rick Sales, longtime manager of Slayer, Ghost and Mastodon. “It’s like, ‘How long is the string?'”
Bravado’s President, Matt YoungHe added that Counterfind and Universal Music’s in-house intellectual property protection team were responding “aggressively,” and that UMG artists and managers were grateful for the company’s reports, which showed it had removed all unauthorized material online. But “it’s still like whack-a-mole,” he said. While Amazon has been “good” at strengthening its procedures for fighting pirates, “these marketplaces don’t really care where this business is coming from,” and “when you Google an artist, some of the first things that come up are pirated goods.”
Representatives from Corsearch and CounterFind disagree. Aronson describes a repeat offender who was “essentially scraping and copying entire artist merch sites” using website addresses with one character removed from the official URL. After reporting the pirate for months through multiple hosting providers, CounterFind used the Lanham Act to permanently remove the site and domain. In April, Corsearch worked with Chinese police to raid the warehouse of alleged online counterfeiter Pandabuy, seizing millions of packages that were destined for shipment to customers. “The key is to not stop at a cease and desist order. It’s just one mechanism in our enforcement strategy,” Cherayath says.
In addition to locating unauthorized merchandise sellers on the Internet and providing bands with data on where counterfeiters are located, Corsearch has also helped Iron Maiden distinguish which T-shirt manufacturers are bootleggers and which are innocent fans designing their own clothes for a few dollars. The Corsearch system also allows band management to respond to tips from fans and identify bootleggers and counterfeiters based on complaints, such as Facebook scammers promising VIP tickets and backstage access for $500 a click.
“This is the bane of my life: as soon as I announce a tour, some online bootlegger steals an image of my tour poster and prints it on t-shirts within five minutes,” says Wiley. “The Corsearch system has almost paid for itself; it gets to the root of the problem pretty quickly without having to hire a local lawyer.”
This story appears in the June 8, 2024 issue. Billboard.
