this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2024
1091 points (99.0% liked)

Technology

59777 readers
4723 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s
[email protected]
[email protected]
L4s
enu
1091
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 [email protected] to c/technology
229 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 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 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 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.

[–] [email protected] 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 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.