New business model just dropped

I would have some respect, perhaps even envy, for these shameless grifters if it weren’t for the fact that they’re not really ripping off tech companies, they’re ripping off the artists who are being exploited by tech companies via streaming.

Forbes:

In a scheme federal authorities are labeling "brazen fraud," a North Carolina man allegedly used artificial intelligence to create hundreds of thousands of songs, then continuously streamed them using bot accounts to generate unlawful royalty payments totaling more than $10 million.

This fucking guy apparently ran up thousands of AI-generated tracks then used bots to continuously shuffle them.

"We need to get a TON of songs fast to make this work around the anti-fraud policies these guys are all using now," Smith emailed two unnamed co-conspirators, according to the indictment. That's apparently so he wouldn't call attention to his maneuvers by streaming the same song too many times.

Other emails cited by prosecutors include a financial estimate Smith allegedly emailed himself saying that at a certain point bot accounts at a certain point, could generate approximately 661,440 streams per day. The indictment says the correspondence shows that the average royalty per stream was half of one cent, which would have meant daily royalties of $3,307.20, monthly royalties of $99,216 and annual royalties of US $1,207,128.

The problem is, of course, if you want to get paid, you gotta leave a trail. I guess his was easy to follow. Probably didn’t help, emailing details of his criminal conspiracy to himself.