Man Arrested for Creating Fake Bands With AI, Then Making $10 Million by Listening to Their Songs With Bots
Man Arrested for Creating Fake Bands With AI, Then Making $10 Million by Listening to Their Songs With Bots
An alleged scammer has been arrested under suspicion that he used AI to create a wild number of fake bands — and fake streams to with them.
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.
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Fuck it. This scam was clever enough that I appreciate and sorta admire it.
No.
Music play-farming has been a thing for probably almost a decade by now.
Spotify divides the huge amount of money they get from subscribers each month, evenly among all the plays during that month.
Someone figured out ages ago, that since spotify has a free tier, that means that if you can get some tracks on spotify as an artist, you can then create an army of free-tier bot accounts and massively inflate the share of the money you get paid as an "artist".
Of course, this comes at the cost of everyone elses legit plays becoming worth less. Its an absolutely disgusting scam and Spotify has been ignoring it happening for years.
Adding AI generation into the mix is barely an innovation.
Edit: And if you're wondering how it works with services that don't have a free tier, it is done by hijacking peoples real accounts, then having them stream the relevant tracks over and over. Either by stealing entire accounts, or infecting devices that are already logged in with malware that will open the relevant app/website and play the tracks over and over.
The solution, to me, would seem to be to divide the revenue up on an individual basis instead. Does some sort of licensing issue prevent this? I'd think that the legitimate record labels would want to fix this loophole ASAP so that they can get more money.
AFAIK YT Music does this. The money from your subscription gets divided amongst whatever you listened to.
That still wouldn't address the stolen account problem, but yes, it'd be a huge improvement.
I have no idea why Spotify still sticks to this massively exploitable model, except for the fact that it MASSIVELY inflates their stats for investors and advertisers.
exceot for the fact that it MASSIVELY inflates their stats for investors and advertisers.
Ah yes, the Reddit strategy.
That's super cool to know. Seems more fair than the way Spotify does it?
Google has been doing it with YouTube for as long as there has been a paid version of it. If you're a premium subscriber, the creators you watch get a portion of your subscription based on how much you watch them. It's why premium subscriber views are worth more than free views.
That's why IMO YouTube premium is worth it. My subscription supports the creators I watch and I get no ads.
Fuck Spotify, they can eat a bag of dicks after renewing Joe cum-guzzling Rogan for $200million. They deserve to have all of their money stolen.
Spotify is losing nothing. They take their cut either way.
The only people getting their money stolen are real artists. Their share of the income shrinks as these scammers inflate the number of plays that the money is shared between.
I didn’t realize it was a thing. Thanks for taking the time to explain!
It seems like it would be super easy for them to close this loophole. If you use the model that free tier listeners (real ones) will listen to about the same distribution of songs as the paying listeners, then just stop counting all free tier listeners and multiply the amount paid out for the pay-tier listeners by an appropriate factor to make payouts the same as before.
Y'know this guy seems intelligent enough to come up with this scheme, but not intelligent enough to keep a low profile. I honestly don't understand that.
Personally, I'd do the math to pay myself a living wage with this so that my actual work salary is nothing but a cherry on top; manage it so it seems like hype is ebbing and flowing in a natural way. If you ever figure out a way to break the system like this, you should never act in a way that draws attention to yourself.
I imagine quite a few folks have done this. You don't hear about everyone that got away with it but you definitely hear about those that get caught.
It’s like the person who figured out the free gas card hack and let her friends use it. If she’d kept it herself, she’d still get free gas.
Just like in this case, it isn't straight forward. She wasn't simply "letting her friends use it", she was selling use of the trick.
If you ever figure out a way to break the system like this, you should never act in a way that draws attention to yourself.
There was a guy who robbed banks and he wasn't caught for decades because he just lived an ordinary working-class lifestyle. Cheap little apartment, no fancy car etc. etc.
Once you have to put that amount of effort and attention in for a reasonable income... you are just doing a job.... a job no-one benefits from. So it won't be satisfying to do. No longer beating the system, just beating yourself.
I thought the same, but it's at the cost of real artists who are struggling to survive in a harsh market, so it still hurts. Sadly, this man isn't unique. There are many Spotify listening farms listening to fake artists with AI generated songs just over 30sec which is the minimal listening requirement to get payed. And Spotify does nothing, as they get more money too.
I can appreciate a well performed scheme or crime, but only if it steals from the rich and big corps. In this case, it steals from honest artists who give us amazing music while mostly being under paid on a regular basis, with the exception here and there.
Stealing from the poor is really low. Only the biggest assholes are capable of doing that. (looks at all the billionaires)
Ah. I thought this was an isolated incident. I understand, and agree with, your point.
You don't need those commas in that sentence. It makes you sound like Christopher Walken 😅
I’ve got a fever, and the only prescription, is more cowbell.
When I first read your comment about this scheme keeping money from artists I was skeptical. But, yup! It is right there on Spotify's website:
We distribute the net revenue from Premium subscription fees and ads to rightsholders.
Now, granted a bunch of those "rightsholders" are likely big corporate record labels but your point stands. The little guy is getting screwed, too.
Though, adding to your final thought, I bet if it was only the little guy getting screwed and not the corpos I bet DOJ wouldn't have cared.
See this video for more info about these scams and how Spotify is enabling them and protects them.
I think you're confused about who got hurt by the scheme. Billion dollar streaming platforms fucking over artists don't need to be defended.
Who's defending the streaming platforms?
If you read my comment again, you can see I noted that Spotify is in on it. They profit too from these schemes. All those bots listening to 30sec AI songs playlists are running on Spotify premium accounts so Spotify won't do anything to fight fraud. They take 30%.
I never defended any platform, I only defended the artists. So I guess the confused one is you, my friend.