Disclaimer: fuck AI.
I don’t get it. Is it illegal to make songs with AI? Shouldn’t they be going after the AI companies?
You don’t go after the user, you go after the dealer.
This whole thing stinks of being set up by AI companies to set some precedent.
He was boosting his streams with bots, which is why it’s fraud. By doing this he also tricked the recommendation algorithm to show more of the generated tracks to legit listeners, thereby he removing human listeners from legit artists, hurting their income. (this is also written in the article)
Smith was charged in September 2024 with fraudulently obtaining more than $10m in royalty payments by amassing as many as 661,440 streams daily between 2017 and 2024, yielding annual royalties of $1,027,128.
This already deserves movie adaptation.
Why do these articles not list the music that was sold or the artist names used?
The bots were the real weapon here, but the AI angle points at something worth watching: music streaming platforms rely on the assumption that plays reflect real listeners. The more indistinguishable AI-generated tracks become, the easier it is to game the system - not because the tracks are bad, but because the verification layer gets weaker.
What keeps this system honest now? Mostly good luck and the assumption that most people won’t bother. Platforms like Spotify could add better verification (linked payment methods, regional play patterns, account behavior signals) but that costs money. Easier to just prosecute fraudsters retroactively and call it solved.
Maybe this is why there’s a global coordinated push for age verification?
Sounds like the botting was the problem, not the AI-generated tracks. He could’ve done the same with sounds of nature or some other shit like that.
Clickbait is strong with this post.
The case against Smith highlights a growing problem for the music industry that had largely recovered from the Napster music piracy era of the early 2000s only to be faced with an AI-based threat to revenue from music streaming platforms such as Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube Music.
This is supposed to make me feel sympathetic to the multi billion dollar corporations? Fuck all the way off with that shit.
The artists get essentially none of that money, so when they talk about the “music industry” they are talking about all the parasites feeding off them. Rob them for all they are worth.
“Due to lower than expected album sales, James Hetfield has had to settle for a solid gold swimming pool instead of the solid platinum pool he really wanted.”
#ItShouldHaveBeenLars
Money good. Napster bad.
Beer. Goood!
Let them fight.
The ONLY reason the industry cares is because of the fake streamers part of this. They not only welcome ai music, platforms like Spotify are creating ai music of their own so they can cut out the pittance they pay the artists.
This is not a goodguys-win story.
We are getting to the point where a Butlerian jihad will be necessary. Though shalt not make a machine in the image type vibe. The arts exist for people to explore and enjoy.
This criminal is guilty of fraud, similar to Trump. Cunningly he did it in a way that was not easily detectable. How many others are now considering ways to do something similar. So to make a personal decision not to use AI is not going to affect these fraudsters.
He is only guilty of using tools that should have been illegal in the first place.
You don’t go after the user, you go after the dealer.
Your attitude is EXACTLY what AI companies want people to feel like.
FUCK AI.
How about they stop stealing artworks to make and power these slop machines in the first place. But of court, blame the poor junkie instead of a multi billion dollar corporation.
Repeat after me:
FUCK AI,
FUCK SPOTIFY,
FUCK APPLE,
FUCK YOUTUBE,
FUCK CORPORATIONS,
FUCK BILLIONAIRES,Who gives a shit about the fraud? Nobody actually enjoys listening to AI music and he defrauded Spotify. Good for him, frankly, shame he got caught. Obligatory fuck AI.
The article says he took money from the pool that pays actual artists. The fraud was against them not specifically Spotify. Personally, I think Spotify, Netflix, Amazon are abominations in the way they use their control to defraud suppliers and customers alike and should be reigned in but ripping off what little artists get is bad. Not victimless.
You’d be surprised with the amount of people who love the Muzak-filled playlists made by Spotify.
Honestly, I kinda don’t believe it. I once was listening to music as background noise on YouTube, and the auto-play algorithm apparently put me on a video of AI-generated music. After around 10 minutes or so, something just felt off to me, the music felt really boring and lifeless, and so I alt-tabbed and discovered it was AI. I wasn’t actively listening or even paying attention and my subconscious clocked it.
I would heavily doubt the reports you receive about the popularity or success of AI-generated art. There are very influential and powerful people and institutions heavily invested in it who have a very strong incentive to manufacture evidence and just outright lie about it to keep the bubble inflated, either because they’re true believers in AI, or because they want to offload their investment to retail investors before the bubble pops
I’m not talking about popularity or success here. But rather, I think you massively overestimate the ear of the average Spotify subscriber.
You might be right, I’ve always considered my ear to be below average to be honest, but maybe I’m underestimating myself, or overestimating others
I feel like I’m missing something in this article. If he was taking the music but also faking the play counts with bots, how were other artists missing out?
The streaming service pays them out of a pool proportionally. So he basically diluted the distribution from that pool, resulting in lower payments to everyone else.
How is that different from Spotify producing their own AI-gen music? Seems like that’s 3-4 minutes of listening that otherwise would’ve been spent listening to an artist.
It’s different when a corporation does it.
/s
The crime here was faking the play counts with listening bots, thus closing the loop. If an artist built a machine to play their own song a billion times to make them money, that would also be a crime, I suppose.
No clue
That would be the missing bit! Cheers
when do the ai owners start paying the damages on stealing content to power the models? it’s kinda the same…
Oh no!
I hope all the details are shared so that we can all carefully avoid doing the same to those music industry bas…s-fishing executives.
Got greedy
While not being rich enough to have fuck you money and get away with it.
Right. Should gone slower, more secure, settled for a million. Bird in the hand.
Removed by mod
Bad bot, go home.
While I am not against AI as a tool, this person being a tool with AI generated slop remixes everywhere as a hustle is not approve.
