There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

Man Arrested for Creating Fake Bands With AI, Then Making $10 Million by Listening to Their Songs With Bots

The songs that the AI CEO provided to Smith originally had file names full of randomized numbers and letters such as “n_7a2b2d74-1621-4385-895d-b1e4af78d860.mp3,” the DOJ noted in its detailed press release.

When uploading them to streaming platforms, including Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music, the man would then change the songs’ names to words like “Zygotes,” “Zygotic,” and “Zyme Bedewing,” whatever that is.

The artist naming convention also followed a somewhat similar pattern, with names ranging from the normal-sounding “Calvin Mann” to head-scratchers like “Calorie Event,” “Calms Scorching,” and “Calypso Xored.”

To manufacture streams for these fake songs, Smith allegedly used bots that stream the songs billions of times without any real person listening. As with similar schemes, the bots’ meaningless streams were ultimately converted to royalty paychecks for the people behind them.

Underwaterbob ,

Wow. I’m a hobbyist musician. I have ~12 million listens across various streaming services and have made a whopping $45 in the two years since I finally released ~25 years worth of material. (Which is a lot of why it’s my hobby and not a living.)

I can’t imagine the numbers this guy had to pull off to make that much.

Fedizen ,

there needs to be a law that in order to sell something in a store a real person needs to examine it.

badbytes ,

The guy sounds like a great entrepreneur.

tomkatt ,

Maybe a stupid question but… what exactly was illegal about this? I’m sure there were ToS or EULAs violated, but what law is he being charged on?

DoucheBagMcSwag ,

It’s fraud I’m assuming. They fake “plays” for Spotify to reward by sending payment, but these plays were people that did not exist. Spotify was paying for ghosts to essentially steam music

hayes_ ,

3rd sentence of the article:

Indicted on three counts involving money laundering and wire fraud, the Charlotte-area man faces a maximum of 20 years per charge.

If you follow the article to the press release:

SMITH, 52, of Cornelius, North Carolina, is charged with wire fraud conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; and money laundering conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

tomkatt ,

Ah thanks. I didn’t follow to the release page and just skimmed the article, should have read closer.

CrimeDad ,

Free him

BananaTrifleViolin ,

Maybe he broke terms of service with the streaming companies but they should be pursuing him in civil courts. This feels like abuse of the criminal justice system to retrieve money for companies that were negligent in how they were running their streaming businesses.

This guy produced music and he alsp streamed the music even if it was bots at industrial scale. He seemingly met the criteria needed to get money from the streamers. I’m not a lawyer at all but on cursory look at the definition and elements of wire fraud, I guessing this will hinge on whether this was a “material deception” - but he produced actual music and he streamed it, so is it?

Also i wonder whether it can be proven that the intent was to “defraud” rather than take advantage / game a system.

It feels like the tax payer is bearing the cost of prosecuting someone for a dispute between a person and the multi billion dollar music industry.

Also the music industry trying to paint this as theft of money from other artists is a bullshit - the streaming fees are supposedly divided out proportionately from overall streaming. He caused more streaming so the pot was bigger, and he took a proportionate share of that bigger pot. And any disproportionate sharing reflects the shitty practice’s of the streamers and the big music rights holders who are essentially monopolies squeezing out the smaller competitors from the system.

ayyy ,

Yes but you see the companies he defrauded are big and he is small.

aesthelete ,

Finally a use case for AI.

Etterra ,

Honestly I don’t think this should be a crime.

MentalEdge ,
@MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz avatar

No.

By inflating his own playcounts, the value of each play goes down. All that money he got? Came straight out of the pockets of real artists.

Kyrgizion ,

110K/mo was bound to attract attention. So, purely hypothetically, uhh, what would the lowest cutoff be before eyebrows start raising?

blockheadjt ,

Try 50k, with more realistic artist names, and more varied song names. Then you can bump the number up subsequent months, with the occasional drop sprinkled in for realism.

demizerone ,

And he thought he could get away with it without bribing the politicians!

MoogleMaestro ,

This is the craziest fucking timeline.

It goes to show streaming services are not long for this world with the introduction of AI.

General_Effort ,

SMITH created thousands of accounts on the Streaming Platforms (the “Bot Accounts”) that he could use to stream songs. He then used software to cause the Bot Accounts to continuously stream songs that he owned. At a certain point in the charged time period, SMITH estimated that he could use the Bot Accounts to generate approximately 661,440 streams per day, yielding annual royalties of $1,207,128.

From the original press release: justice.gov/…/north-carolina-musician-charged-mus…

Kinda funny how the term “AI” drowns out all rational thought and reading comprehension. Of course, that’s why it’s there in the clickbait headline. I avoid news sources that pull that sort of thing. I don’t appreciate being manipulated.

Nommer ,

Unfortunate that he got caught. He was simply playing the same game the corps do but since he isn’t mega rich he gets punished.

potentiallynotfelix ,

“What are you in for?”

shalafi ,

Indicted on three counts involving money laundering and wire fraud

Oops. Picked on the big dogs by playing their own game.

Seriously though, probably more going on than what we read here.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • [email protected]
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •