this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2024
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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 [email protected] to c/technology
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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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[โ€“] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (4 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.

[โ€“] 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.

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