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

submitted 2 months ago by ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net to c/technology@lemmy.world

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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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[–] mctoasterson@reddthat.com 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Snoopey@lemmy.world 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think he's getting done for setting up the bots to listen to his own songs for billions of hours

[–] Crankenstein@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] futatorius@lemm.ee 1 points 2 months ago

He also would have to make sure the distribution of song plays over time looks like what would be done by actual humans. Once every 5 minutes, 24/7 is easy to detect. And there should be abandonments, interrupted sessions, etc.

[–] virku@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

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.