An alleged scammer has been arrested under suspicion that he used AI to create a wild number of fake bands — and fake music to go with them — and faking untold streams with more bots to earn millions in ill-gotten revenue.
In a press release, the Department of Justice announced that investigators have arrested 52-year-old North Carolina man Michael Smith, who has been charged with a purportedly seven-year scheme that involved using his real-life music skills to make more than $10 million in royalties.
Indicted on three counts involving money laundering and wire fraud, the Charlotte-area man faces a maximum of 20 years per charge.
Fyi Spotify has been doing stuff like this for years, hire dirt cheap artists, make up a fake artist/band name, upload generic jingles and implant them on every single category playlist they can. Prime example are playlists for things that don’t have too much complexity like lo-fi, calm piano, stuff like that. Disgusting. Edit: u can spot them out by digging thru some of the “artists”, and when u find one with fishy profile try looking them up on other platforms. Millions of plays on Spotify but nearly nonexistent outside of it? That’s a plant😂
How would that benefit Spotify if they are the ones paying the royalties to themselves? Wouldn’t that be net zero?
Take it this way, if 1 person pays 10$ a month for Spotify and gets about 50 hours of music out of it, it’s more beneficial for Spotify if a significant portion of that time is spent on music they pump into the playlists themselves, which costed them pennies to make, instead of having that user listen to real artists, that will ask for actual pay in exchange for their streams. They’re not paying a little bit to make alot, they’re paying a little bit to avoid paying even more. It’s basically average desk job employee outsourcing their work to indians who get like a dollar a day and are happy with it cus it’s their only option
They don’t pay equally to everyone. They benefit large artists more than smaller ones. If you only listen to your totally unknown friend’s music on Spotify, most of your money will still go to popular artists you don’t listen to, and your friend will get nothing because they’re below the threshold of getting a payment. It’s basically theft. Now if some of those popular artists are Spotify themselves behind the scenes, guess where your money is being funneled.
Not that it justifies what Spotify are doing, but the terms they have with the big record companies make it virtually impossible for them to increase their margins through other means. They lose $500m a year as it is.
i understand entirely, it just felt like a good opportunity to say how spotify is trying to enlarge their size of the moneypie by eating out of hardworking musician’s cut and simultaneously filling user’s playlists with bloat
I don’t think it’s Spotify. Spotify already gets their cut, they have no reason to put out “fake music”. This is a very well known “passive income” scheme. It’s obviously real people doing it
Sounds like they are just pissed that he found a way to beat them at their own game.
Nothing wrong with what the man did
They’re just jealous they didn’t get a cut
Isn’t that all that Facebook and Twitter is though?
Every day the Butlerian Jihad looks more and more enticing.
Hey can I do this but just enough to feed my family and keep my house ? I don’t need 10 million 100k a year would do just fine for me !
Thank God the government is here to protect us from dangerous people like this man. /s
