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.
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.
I thought about experimenting with this (Guess it is a good thing I didn’t). There are so many low effort “Lo Fi” types of streams and tracklists on Spotify and elsewhere. Who is to say my software generated garbage would be any worse than those?
There are also YouTubers who generate low effort music and ask their normal content subscribers to stream their shit on Spotify even if they aren’t legitimately listening. So are those streams fraudulent as well?
It sounds like the thing he is getting popped for is the volume of automated streams.
I think he’s getting done for setting up the bots to listen to his own songs for billions of hours
Yea his mistake was pumping the number too much. If he would have kept a steady stream of income and not get greedy, they never would have noticed him.
The band Vulfpeck made a silent album named sleepify and asked their fans to stream it while not listening to other music. Made enough money to fund a tour. Spotify change their terms because of it i believe.
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.
I have ~12 million listens across various streaming services
The great thing about bots is that they can listen to every song on file, 24/7/365, and you can spin up as many of them as you like. 12 million is nothing.
I have to wonder about the logistics. He can’t be running them on his own single Internet connection. Or could VPNs handle it so it would appear his listens are coming from all over the world? $10M is a lot of money. How long did it take to amass that?
Send me a link and I can get you to ~12 million and 1 listens.
How obvious is it that it’s a bot?
Me? Honestly, I think it would be obvious to any discerning listener what music is actually made by a person, and what music is AI generated, but really, there’s so much music out there of wildly varying quality thanks to accessibility of production tools these days, it probably is literally impossible to tell the difference anymore.
I think it would be obvious to any discerning listener what music is actually made by a person
I’m not so sure anymore. Udio’s output is more obvious but Suno has gotten scarily good. I’ll still always crave the human element though and I make my music for myself.
Searching my username should do it. Not sure what streaming services you’re subscribed to. It’s all on YouTube, too.
Humble brag alert
A little bit, for sure. Tempered harshly by the fact I’ve spent thousands of hours and thousands of units of cash on a hobby that paid me back $45. Good thing I don’t do it for the money!
I was just kidding. I’m very jealous. I’ve spent thousands and have nothing to show for it. Maybe a hundred bucks from live shows 20 years ago.
Based on your numbers, ~260k plays per dollar. The person in the submission would have to get ~2600 billions plays to get $10 million.
Something does seem right with those numbers.
There are people on forums doing the same thing as the person in the submission. 1 person with ~30 phones can generate about 15-20k streams in a day doing it manually.
Maybe some kind of increasing scale for revenue depending on larger numbers of listens.
My break down by track is pretty inconsistent, too. I’ve got a single track with over a million listen that made me 36 cents. My most popular track has over 4M listens, and it’s responsible for half that $45. Distrokid doesn’t say which streaming service that revenue comes from, either. Some pay more than others, I imagine.
110K/mo was bound to attract attention. So, purely hypothetically, uhh, what would the lowest cutoff be before eyebrows start raising?
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.
Finally a use case for AI.
Spotify might as well be doing this themselves already to avoid having to pay all those annoying artist
Yeah, a streaming service with the hit songs like “Zyme Bedewing” from everyone’s favorite artist “Calorie Event”.
How is this illegal? Sounds legit to me.
I use AI to answer ai generated emails at work all the time. I also use AI to design buildings that will never house people, but computer systems. It’s all a shell game folks!!!
Probably the bots listening part. The point for the royalties is to get people to use the software and pay for it
Guess they’ll have to shut down reddit since they have their analytics boosted by large amounts of bot activity.
The whole point of advertisers paying reddit for ad space is so people will see the ads.
Reddit explicitly allow bots; Spotify does not - that’s the difference.
Reddit explicitly allow bots; Spotify does not - that’s the difference.
If the ad agencies don’t like that then yeah they should fine Reddit or get compensated for Reddit claiming they’re more popular than they are. I don’t see the counterpoint
(Unless it wasn’t a counterpoint)
It was more or less a throw away comment pointing out that rich people and corporations don’t get legally held accountable for the same transgressions the same way normal people do.
Rules for thee but not for me with this crap is getting tiresome.
Should just be fraud right?
The guy sounds like a great entrepreneur.
If he already had millions in the bank the lawyers would have made this go away before anyone in the public would have noticed.
Still better than the theory that Spotify itself is making AI jazz and putting them on their oficial playlists to not pay artists.
Free him
And he thought he could get away with it without bribing the politicians!
Honestly I don’t think this should be a crime.
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.
Can you imagine how exciting it would be though when this actually started to work? This probably started as a side project, with a dude saying like, nahhh this could never work.
Until suddenly it did
<play rock guitar riff>
i mean this is the system we got set up isnt it?
bro found a glitch in the system
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?
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
Facebook and other social media corporations use AI bots to generate “views” to inflate their traffic numbers to entice advertisers. They also use bots to piss people off and drive “engagement.”. Which is also fraud.
Its not wrong when a corporation does it its capitalism. When an individual does it its crime.
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.
Those are the charges yes, but how is this any different than what all sorts of corporations do
The difference is he was a poor trying to pull himself up. Corporations are glorious entities that can do no wrong in American law.
Ah thanks. I didn’t follow to the release page and just skimmed the article, should have read closer.
