Man Created AI Songs And Used Bots To Collect $10M In Royalty Payments From Streaming Services: Indictment

[sicktwistedfreak]

Michael Smith, 52, is accused of a scheme to create hundreds of thousands of songs with artificial intelligence and the use of automated "bot" programs to repeatedly stream the songs on platforms like Apple Music, Amazon Music, Spotify and YouTube Music.

https://www.ibtimes.com/ai-music-stream ... ud-3742230

[Psychobolia.com]

Smart dude! Except that he should have done this through VPNs or from Dubai.

Does that mean we're going to have to solve a captcha every time we wanna stream a song now?

[keyofgee]

He fracked the music industry thats been fracking musicians forever…i get a penny a spotify play…pitiful. I hope more ppl
Frack those companies

[Engine13]

Somebody explain, in great detail, exactly how he did this.

[EatNails]

Somebody explain, in great detail, exactly how he did this.

The AI part doesn't mean anything here. He could have uploaded him strumming a guitar, or farting into a microphone. All he needed to do was get a song onto the platform.

Now the guy has acquired a few hundred old phones, PCs, and whatnot. They're all programmed to open Spotify and stream the songs he uploaded. The old devices just run around the clock, and he's getting a royalty back off each stream.

[Van Ailin']

Somebody explain, in great detail, exactly how he did this.

This is why if there is a "free tier," it should be radically limited (5 songs and then IP address is canceled) and should not pay out. If he had to pay for each account doing all that 'bot streaming, he'd likely be paying more than the streams are earning.

[HueyRamone]

i get a penny a spotify play…

There's no way it's that high. Average stream is 3/10th of a cent.

[HueyRamone]

Somebody explain, in great detail, exactly how he did this.

The AI part doesn't mean anything here. He could have uploaded him strumming a guitar, or farting into a microphone. All he needed to do was get a song onto the platform.

Now the guy has acquired a few hundred old phones, PCs, and whatnot. They're all programmed to open Spotify and stream the songs he uploaded. The old devices just run around the clock, and he's getting a royalty back off each stream.

He had an AI company make him hundreds of thousands of songs. Wasting the time to record them yourself, even playing nonsense, would take tons of extra time. The AI made his trove of songs fairly instantaneous.

Even if he were to record 1 song a minute, without AI, that would be one hundred twenty five 40 hour weeks of recording songs, to get to 300,000 songs. And he may have had more.

[EatNails]

Somebody explain, in great detail, exactly how he did this.

The AI part doesn't mean anything here. He could have uploaded him strumming a guitar, or farting into a microphone. All he needed to do was get a song onto the platform.

Now the guy has acquired a few hundred old phones, PCs, and whatnot. They're all programmed to open Spotify and stream the songs he uploaded. The old devices just run around the clock, and he's getting a royalty back off each stream.

He had an AI company make him hundreds of thousands of songs. Wasting the time to record them yourself, even playing nonsense, would take tons of extra time. The AI made his trove of songs fairly instantaneous.

Even if he were to record 1 song a minute, without AI, that would be one hundred twenty five 40 hour weeks of recording songs, to get to 300,000 songs. And he may have had more.

That only kept him from being caught sooner. He had enough variety that no single song was getting too many plays. Still, other people have done it with much less.

The trick really is finding a way to play them all enough times.

[NeonKnite]

The tech industry ripped off the music industry which ripped off the artists.

[ijwthstd]

Michael Smith, 52, is accused of a scheme to create hundreds of thousands of songs with artificial intelligence and the use of automated "bot" programs to repeatedly stream the songs on platforms like Apple Music, Amazon Music, Spotify and YouTube Music.

https://www.ibtimes.com/ai-music-stream ... ud-3742230

This guy is a genius. Jail? I am sure he deserves a grammy at the very least.

[Demon Kogure]

"...royalty payments are made proportionately to musicians and songwriters, so that streaming fraud diverts funds from musicians and songwriters whose songs were legitimately streamed by real consumers."

So there's a fixed amount of money that gets paid out in total to everybody, regardless of the number of artists and regardless of the number of streams? What kind of bullshit business model is that? Every time somebody uploads a song, everybody else gets a smaller piece of the pie?