Musician made $10M by streaming AI-written songs with bots

[TaylorSwift 164,611]

A North Carolina man used artificial intelligence to create hundreds of thousands of fake songs by fake bands, then put them on streaming services where they were enjoyed by an audience of fake listeners, prosecutors said.

Penny by penny, he collected a very real $10 million, they said when they charged him with fraud.

The man, Michael Smith, 52, was accused in a federal indictment unsealed on Wednesday of stealing royalty payments from digital streaming platforms for seven years. Mr. Smith, a flesh-and-blood musician, produced A.I.-generated music and played it billions of times using bots he had programmed, according to the indictment.

The supposed artists had names like “Callous Post,” “Calorie Screams” and “Calvinistic Dust” and produced tunes like “Zygotic Washstands,” “Zymotechnical” and “Zygophyllum” that were top performers on Amazon Music, Apple Music and Spotify, according to the charges.

Mr. Smith was arrested on Wednesday and faces charges including wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 20 years in prison for each charge.
 

 

[Lextyr97 20,851]

Damn I wish I thought of it first. I would’ve stopped at $1mil

[Anderson123 43,046]

Damn that was smart. I was going to say "But why is it a crime?" then I saw that yeah it steals royalties from streaming platforms I guess.

[Rahrahbitchson 23,686]

Is his world and we are just living in it 

[LaLa 19,937]

Release him 

But yeah, he should have been more careful with his bot farms I guess. So often people running scams get greedy lol. Quit while you're ahead! 

[Naak Le Vaar 1,232]

He got too greedy. He should've collected an easy mil and lay low

[TEANUS 16,227]

The amount of streams he had to have faked to accumulate $10,000,000.00 in damages is insane….Spotify used to be estimated to pay an average of $0.004/per stream

[PunkTheFunk 125,734]

The devil works hard but Katy's Twitter followers work harder.

[Hydrangea 8,410]

It’s only ok when streaming companies steal! Not the other way around 

[Economy 53,230]

22 minutes ago, Hydrangea said:

It’s only ok when streaming companies steal! Not the other way around 

U can argue contracts are exploitive sure, but at least they created a useful business with value for customets despite its greedy side shinning like ij all capitalisg sectors...

 

But making up stuff with AI and streaming for himself with bots is a totally different level and not at all the same thing

 

 

[HelloHangoverz 17,452]

3 hours ago, Teletubby said:

a maximum of 20 years in prison for each charge

20 years is absolutely ridiculous for this.

 

[Argentum 1,705]

main pop girly?

[SpadesToStart 3,861]

I don’t see how this is fraud, unless there is something in the user or artist agreement of the streaming service that he ran afoul of. 
 

If I have a bunch of bots stream Die With A Smile, and Gaga gets all the royalties, who they gonna pin it on?

[TaylorSwift 164,611]

21 minutes ago, SpadesToStart said:

I don’t see how this is fraud, unless there is something in the user or artist agreement of the streaming service that he ran afoul of. 
 

If I have a bunch of bots stream Die With A Smile, and Gaga gets all the royalties, who they gonna pin it on?

it's violation of terms & conditions
Spotify has also introduced a new deterrent to combat artificial streaming, effective April 1, 2024, charging labels and distributors per track when flagrant artificial streaming is detected on their content.

[Economy 53,230]

On 9/6/2024 at 11:25 PM, HelloHangoverz said:

20 years is absolutely ridiculous for this.

 

It said maximum

 

If ur not a repeat offender who has been in trouble with law before, or try to lie in court etc, its very very rare you get anywhere near the maximum