How to read an AWAL statement, and what "Fraudulent Streams" means on it

An AWAL revenue details export is a wider file than most. It carries the sale in the currency it happened in and again in your account's currency, it carries a gross and a net, and it labels every row with a transaction type. All of that is useful once you know which column is which.

The columns that hold the money

AWAL writes its headers in capitals. The ones that matter:

• STATEMENT PERIOD — the month the statement covers. This is your period column.
• SALE COUNTRY — the listener's country, written as a name rather than a code.
• STORE — who paid. SERVICE DETAIL narrows it to the product tier.
• TRACK and ISRC — the recording.
• TRANSACTION TYPE — what kind of stream or sale the row is. More on this below.
• UNITS SOLD — the count.
• GROSS REVENUE SALE CURRENCY — what the store paid, in the currency of the sale.
• GROSS REVENUE ACCOUNT CURRENCY — the same, converted to your account currency.
• ACCOUNT SHARE — your percentage under the contract.
• NET SHARE ACCOUNT CURRENCY — what you were actually paid for the row.

The last one is your earnings column. It is easy to pick the wrong one: a tool that takes the sale-currency figure will report a New Zealand sale in New Zealand dollars as though it were US dollars, and the total will be wrong by whatever the exchange rate was that month.

Gross and net are both there, and both are useful

Because AWAL reports gross and net on every row, you can see the distributor's share directly. Divide total net by total gross and you have the effective rate you are paying, across every store and territory, for that month. DistroKid's export does not give you this — it reports only earnings — so an AWAL file is the one to use if you want to know what distribution actually costs you.

Transaction type, and the fraudulent rows

Every AWAL row is labelled. The common labels are the ones you would expect: Subscription Audio Streams, Ad-Supported Audio Streams, Mid-Tier Subscription Audio Streams, Ad-Supported Video Streams.

And then there is Fraudulent Streams.

On one real February statement we have worked with, Fraudulent Streams was the most common transaction type on the file — 615 rows, against 441 for subscription streams. Every one of those rows carried units and paid nothing. The platform had detected artificial streaming activity on the recordings, refused to pay for it, and AWAL passed the refusal through as a labelled row rather than dropping it.

Three things follow from that.

First, those units must not be counted as streams. A reach figure that includes them overstates the catalog by exactly the amount a platform has already decided was not real listening.

Second, they must not be deleted from the file either. If the rows are gone, the statement no longer reconciles to what AWAL sent, and there is no record of the problem.

Third, a rising share of fraudulent rows is a warning. Platforms escalate from withholding payment to removing the recording to closing the account. If the share of your units labelled fraudulent is going up month on month, that is the moment to find out where the streams are coming from — a playlist promotion service is the usual answer — and stop it.

SNVRKOTICS's statement reader keeps these rows, labels them, and reports them on their own line: "units reported and not paid". They are out of every unit total and in every detail export.

Country names, not codes

AWAL writes "New Zealand" where DistroKid writes "NZ". On its own that is fine; combined with anything else it produces two rows for one country. Any consolidation across distributors has to map names to codes first.

What to check each month

Total NET SHARE ACCOUNT CURRENCY and confirm it matches the payment. Divide it by total GROSS REVENUE ACCOUNT CURRENCY for your effective rate. Count the rows labelled Fraudulent Streams and compare the count with last month. Then look at the store breakdown for concentration.

The statement reader detects an AWAL export by its headers — STATEMENT PERIOD, SALE COUNTRY and NET SHARE ACCOUNT CURRENCY together — and does all of this on import.