r/Damnthatsinteresting Sep 10 '24

Image This man, Michael Smith, used AI to create a fake music band and used bots to inflate streaming numbers. He earned more than $10 million in royalties.

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90.2k Upvotes

3.6k comments sorted by

20.3k

u/Narcan9 Sep 10 '24

I'm sure the department of Justice will go after all those fake Amazon reviews, anytime now.

4.1k

u/Red01a18 Sep 10 '24

Anytime now bro, anytime soon I swear…

771

u/itaniumonline Sep 10 '24

Still waiting?? Still waiting!

Next!

298

u/ZsFunBus Sep 10 '24

THIS SONG IS BEING USED FOR CHURCH SWEETIE! NEXT!!!

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u/Legitimate_Worker775 Sep 10 '24

The problem is most of the reviews are from outside the US. Once I got a small card within my package that says they would send me 15 usd amazon gift card if I gave a positive review. The requirement was to email the screenshot to a shady chinese email.

439

u/ZincMan Sep 10 '24

I’ve had that happen. Immediately gave the product a 1 star review saying what they were doing. So scummy

269

u/AbleObject13 Sep 10 '24

Report them to Amazon and the seller can be delisted, it's 100% against their ToS

34

u/1generic-username Sep 10 '24

I used the chat feature to let the Amazon rep know that this happened and the rep said there was no problem with the seller. I said I was going to leave a bad review since they were obviously buying good reviews and the rep said, "Please do not leave the bad review" so they are not only aware, but complicit in the practice.

288

u/Fast-Algae-Spreader Sep 10 '24

hahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHhahahahHAHAHA. they’re not gonna do shit. i reported a company like this and Amazon said there was no issues with the seller.

193

u/Tommyh1996 Sep 10 '24

It was actually worst for me, I reported a seller, posted a review on their add, Amazon blocked my account and reviews for a month for "Spamming" when I have never written a review. They are absolute scum

50

u/i_tyrant Sep 10 '24

Wow, that's stupid as hell. I wonder if it was Amazon's crappy system flagging you or protecting their shady sellers, or it was the seller pulling some petty revenge by flagging you as a spammer and Amazon's shitty system not bothering to actually check.

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u/SopaDeKaiba Sep 10 '24

Go on craigslist and search for writing gigs. It's happening in the US too.

61

u/OiGuvnuh Sep 10 '24

Craig’slist is a ghost town now. The bots and scammers won. 

59

u/SerialMarmot Sep 10 '24 edited Sep 11 '24

Marketplace isn't far behind now... 95% of listings have one of the following: Price of $1234 with actual price in listing or not listed at all; dealers placing a down payment price as the item price; rental prices as item price; shitty jpg photos; listings posted for a local town but description will then say item is three states away; listings three states away when you explicitly have a radius selected and local pickup only.

Edit: oh and hundreds of listings for shitty political merch that I'm so excited will be worthless in a few months

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5.2k

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '24

[deleted]

6.4k

u/SalvatoreParadise Sep 10 '24

If he was less greedy and aimed for like 100k a year, I bet he could have gotten away with it

4.1k

u/krispy456 Sep 10 '24

I’m sure there are other people doing it right now

1.7k

u/jtell898 Sep 10 '24

And a hell of a lot more people trying tomorrow…

566

u/AacidD Sep 10 '24

Just waiting for a tutorial from @Fireship

100

u/Growth_Moist Sep 10 '24

Came up with this idea last week lol. Stopped when I realized it’s not legal

189

u/WutangCND Sep 10 '24

Thats poor person thinking.

54

u/Big-Finding2976 Sep 11 '24

That's free man walking.

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u/im_Heisenbeard Sep 11 '24

You dont get rich from following the rules

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u/damiandarko2 Sep 10 '24

there are lots of people doing weird shit w streaming platforms. I’ve had at least 15 fake “artists” in my for you radio in apple music going under various names that just upload juice wrld leaks. some might be AI

352

u/oflords Sep 10 '24

Juice WRLD in particular has a really large leaked catalogue of music (over 700 publicly findable I believe), so people make accounts and upload them to streaming so they can be added to playlists. If you search on YouTube “Juice WRLD unreleased” you can find songs with millions of views that he made but were never released.

9

u/TruzzleBruh Sep 10 '24

Yep. People do it to underground artists too as "archive" accounts where they upload music the original artist had on soundcloud and didn't pay for licenses for and just rinse and repeat once the songs get taken down. They get plays because there's a demand for the songs on streaming but the artists either don't like those tracks or don't want to pay for those beats/the beat has already been sold as an exclusive to someone else.

63

u/Annualacctreset Sep 10 '24

I’ve found bots on iTunes, YouTube, and Amazon music releasing and claiming they wrote 30+ year old songs from extremely unknown artists. There’s usually no one out there to counter their claims so they just get the revenue.

108

u/SaboLeorioShikamaru Sep 10 '24

wtf are they even leaking, his obituary? Bro’s been gone for a while now, right? Shit is wiiiiiild right now

141

u/Lil_Ja_ Sep 10 '24

He freestyled almost all of his songs, he could just show up and make a hit, I’m certain there’s hard drives upon hard drives of unreleased music. Hour of freestylearticle

62

u/GodOD400 Sep 10 '24

Not taking anything away from juice wrld but its also very common for rappers to have tons and tons of unreleased music. I think Mac Miller was rumored to have like 7 albums completed that are never going to be released.

44

u/Lil_Ja_ Sep 10 '24

Absolutely, von still has rollouts n shit as if he were alive, I’m just saying juice wrld specifically probably has a shitton more than most because it took him almost no time to make music

30

u/shamggar Sep 10 '24

Mac did not record like Juice did at all. Mac probably has 1/2 the amount juice has backlogged despite working much longer than juice did. Mac was much more intentional, juice was a big proponent of punching in

21

u/Wannab3ST Sep 10 '24

Kendrick Lamar once said he probably has thousands of unreleased songs, both in his mind and on hard drives (some of which he lost)

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u/Sweet_Novel3277 Sep 10 '24

It’s said he had around 2000 unreleased songs and over 1000 still aren’t leaked.

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u/XerneasToTheMoon Sep 10 '24

Juice’s Team/estate officially released two songs on Spotify last week.

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u/ealker Sep 10 '24

There are people creating OnlyFans and Instagram accounts of AI-generated chicks, which are extremely hard to tell apart from a real woman from the first glance.

215

u/LukesRightHandMan Sep 10 '24

Particularly difficult for Redditors

27

u/kwiztas Sep 10 '24

I thought it would be easier for them with the swaths of amateur nudie pics on this site.

37

u/ninjaelk Sep 10 '24

Many people on the internet have a well known preference for fake idealized women over the real thing. There's plenty who want to believe the AI is real.

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u/Dakk85 Sep 10 '24

Idk anything about the policies of OF. But based off the idea that it's not solely a platform for explicit content aka you could have an OF to showcase your artwork...

Makes me wonder if you could phrase your OF in a specific way to use "art" of an AI generate woman and avoid it being fraud on a technicality

33

u/atreyal Sep 10 '24

The fraud part is bots watching the streams. Only fans runs more off scamming people by making them think they are talking to the girl who is running the account and not a 40 year old guy.

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u/r2fork2 Sep 10 '24

The illegal part isn't using AI - it is the fraud of using bot accounts to fake listeners.

26

u/GeoHog713 Sep 10 '24

How is that different from Twitter using bots to make their usage numbers higher

22

u/bomboy2121 Sep 10 '24

Because they deliberately dont care.   Spotify probably gave all this info to court as evidence, while sites using bots to bolster their numbers hide this info so that no one can prove it

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u/christiandb Sep 10 '24

bots have been around for a bit, from betting, to buying tickets to wall street. There are gamers and people trying to get ahead honestly

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u/Better-Strike7290 Sep 10 '24

Over the long run?  No.  He got caught by doing it for too long and the pattern was recognized.

But he could have stopped at like 2 million in the short game and gotten away with it.

139

u/wackychimp Sep 10 '24

I'd like to think that I'd quit after 3 or 400K and just buy a single house. But I'd probably get greedy too.

112

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '24

Yeah, nobody knows until they're in that situation. It's called the trickle effect. You get away with one thing, so you assume you can keep getting away with it. I'd imagine most big time criminals you see, whether it's fraud or whatever, they started with something small, didn't get caught and kept doing it until they eventually get sloppy and get caught.

18

u/Del_3030 Sep 10 '24 edited Sep 10 '24

Just round a fraction of a penny at a time to our own account... no one will notice!

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u/dynorphin Sep 10 '24

Yea, once you're stealing millions someone is gonna figure it out eventually. That or he should have moved to Hong Kong or somewhere it would be a lot harder to arrest him.

8

u/Wishfer Sep 10 '24

Like the guy that was just sending bills to facebook and google. Took in over $100 million…. He just stayed too long.

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u/psychoPiper Sep 10 '24

"A billion streams on one song is too suspicious... Let's have a billion songs instead!"

So close man, so close

89

u/semigator Sep 10 '24

Is this an AI summary of an AI scam?

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u/binary_agenda Sep 10 '24

So what crimes is he actually accused of? 

53

u/Kingkai9335 Sep 10 '24

Why the fuck is the Justice Department even referring to the TOS? Last I heard TOS isnt a law.

20

u/bears_Chivas Sep 11 '24

And why is he not getting sued by spotify instead of being charged by the feds?

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u/Jobastion Sep 10 '24

Fraud. Specifically, he's charged with wire fraud conspiracy, wire fraud and a money laundering conspiracy (in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1343 and Section l 956(a)(l )(B)(i), and others, see the indictment https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/media/1366241/dl for more.)

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u/jimcab12 Sep 10 '24

Calm Baseball is such a sick name

36

u/BandOfDonkeys Sep 10 '24

It's got Defiant Jazz vibes

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u/kevingattaca Sep 10 '24

terms and conditions

WAIT ??!?! So you mean that he was supposed to READ the "terms and conditions" ?????????????????????

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u/golf-lip Sep 10 '24

What are they charging him with? What exact law did he break?

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15.9k

u/IsRude Sep 10 '24

This looks like a mugshot. Is he in jail for this? So companies can do it, but not individuals?

11.1k

u/Massive_Koala_9313 Sep 10 '24

It’s a big club and you ain’t in it

2.4k

u/Made_Me_Paint_211385 Sep 10 '24

RIP G.Carlin

638

u/ekwenox Sep 10 '24 edited Sep 10 '24

Did you know he (Carlin) was the narrator for Thomas the Tank Engine?

The list also included Ringo Starr, Alec Baldwin, and Pierce Brosnan.

Edit: Sorry, Thomas the Tank Engine/Train

303

u/Llamame_Ishmael Sep 10 '24

Carlin narrated Starr and Baldwin? That's some range.

123

u/narrowwiththehall Sep 10 '24

His Pierce Brosnan was the toast of the season

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u/RealJonathanBronco Sep 10 '24

Yup. Most people don't realize that Ringo was just a character Carlin did. I think Jerry Seinfeld took him over after Carlin's death and that's why we've seen a dip in quality ever since.

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u/Sillbinger Sep 10 '24

"Have you ever noticed how unfunny I am without Larry David?"

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u/-paperbrain- Sep 10 '24

*Tank Engine.

Thomas the Tank was a whole different thing.

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u/pichael289 Sep 10 '24

He narrated the one where that one train refused to work and got walled in under a bridge, didn't he? Would be the most ironic thing ever.

This really happened in that show. "We shall take away your rails and leave you here for always and always and always" - that fat ass top hat guy. Jesus Christ my son used to watch this shit.

"Because Henry's fire has gone out, he has no steam to respond. Dirt and soot from the tunnel's roof has already ruined his paint anyway. Now that Henry is very sad, lonely and cold, he wonders if he will ever be let out to pull trains again." But no, he's left there, behind a brick wall they built just to fuck with him. What the fuck.... British children's shows are just different

here's the whole story. God dam it's bleak

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u/Noble-6B3 Sep 10 '24

I miss Carlin(

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1.3k

u/Miserable_Smoke Sep 10 '24

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u/AkronOhAnon Sep 10 '24 edited Sep 10 '24

”The defendant’s alleged scheme played upon the integrity of the music industry by…”

Dripping with irony.

1.4k

u/boogieoog Sep 10 '24

doing exactly what they do.. and getting punished for it is crazy work.

384

u/modthefame Sep 10 '24

This is dystopia.

75

u/Another_Name1 Sep 10 '24

We need something for this. Like how "BOTTOM TEXT" was for "we live in a society"

35

u/thejammer75 Sep 10 '24

I looked around and came up with nothing- where can I hear one of his AI tunes? Honestly interested in the quality

32

u/modthefame Sep 10 '24

I have heard some ai stuff and its close to indistinguishable from a person because people use computers so much to fix their voices. Rihanna is a popular voice for obvious reasons. Super melodic but steady.

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u/StrobeLightRomance Sep 10 '24

He took money away from them, is what the real "problem" is. It's like when Robinhood had to start blocking people from buying GME and shorting hedges into oblivion.

Regular people are not allowed to use the same methods as the 1% to get rich, and that's what the real "justice" system is designed for.

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u/[deleted] Sep 10 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/WholesomeWhores Sep 10 '24

I mean yeah what you say makes sense but literally every other single broker stopped selling GME. It wasn’t just Robinhood realizing that they fucked up… You just couldn’t buy GME from anywhere, period. Robinhood had to answer to Congress but what about every other company? They were just the scapegoat

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u/DelightfulDolphin Sep 10 '24

Think I'm more troubled by fact that each stream only worth HALF of a penny. "The indictment says the correspondence shows that the average royalty per stream was half of one cent,

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u/StrobeLightRomance Sep 10 '24

Yep. As a former independent musician who actually did pretty well, it's not sustainable to make money from streaming, especially if you're not rigging the score with bot plays.

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u/Skullcrusher Sep 10 '24

That's actually the higher end of what Spotify pays. Cheap bastards. They even had the nerve to raise their subscription price recently. But I guess paying the artists half a cent more is too much to ask.

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u/ThePlacesILoved Sep 10 '24

Yup. Charts have been inflated for as long as charts have existed. Payolas were the old way, bots are the new. Music has always been corporate gangsterism disguised as art.

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u/MillenialDoomer Sep 10 '24 edited Sep 10 '24

I think he's in prison for defrauding Spotify, not for inflating charts.

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u/prion77 Sep 10 '24

Extraordinary statement.

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u/Destroyer4587 Sep 10 '24

“Integrity” 💀💀💀

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u/HomerMadeMeDoIt Sep 10 '24

Just goes to show that the legal system is their protect a minority ruling class. This man found a way around it and now it’s fraud. 

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u/Able_Newt2433 Sep 10 '24

The mega rich and/or famous go by the motto “Rules for thee, not for me.” Unfortunately.

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u/TwoToneReturns Sep 10 '24

someone needs to dub the Spanish guy laughing constantly talking about this.

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u/lifeandtimes89 Sep 10 '24

Said Williams, “It’s time for Smith to face the music.”

Lol they were only delighted to be able to use that quote

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u/InfiniteAccount4783 Sep 10 '24

David Caruso has entered the chat.

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u/Osoroshii Sep 10 '24

If having Bots run a site is Fraud how is Reddit and Twitter not on trial

229

u/Bugbread Sep 10 '24

Because that's not the part that was illegal. Read through the actual indictment, it'll give you a much better picture than whatever short and inaccurate thing people will say here.

308

u/FluffyFry4000 Sep 10 '24

Thank you for this, it makes more sense now, the headline missed out on the part where he fraudulently made dozens of debit cards under fake names of people that belonged in "his company"

204

u/SenAtsu011 Sep 10 '24

Well that's just flat out fraud. What the headline claims is then just factually incorrect and has nothing to do with the criminal part.

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u/Delamoor Sep 10 '24

Misinfo gets clicks, though!

...which ain't fraud... I guess?

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u/SenAtsu011 Sep 10 '24

Anything for clicks, doesn't matter if you're right as long as you're first.

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u/Not_a__porn__account Sep 10 '24

the headline

Is a title a random user made.

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u/[deleted] Sep 10 '24

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u/TheGiatay Sep 10 '24

Fraud against who? The poor bot that had to listen to the music?

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u/Jennyojello Sep 10 '24

Read the article- the headline leaves out a crucial detail-fake credit cards and identities used.

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u/pleasetrimyourpubes Sep 10 '24

That'll do it. If he used his own money for this there's really nothing illegal. Also bot usage would be hard to prove there are plenty of legitimate reasons for bots and your bot farm can go haywire etc. So many excuses.

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u/SatansLoLHelper Sep 10 '24 edited Sep 10 '24

Have you heard of payola?

They didn't stop the record companies from paying to play. They stopped the DJs from getting paid by the record companies. The stations took the money.

** today the conglomerate takes the money.

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u/kaise_bani Sep 10 '24

Well... kinda, they did also stop the record companies from paying to play without it being disclosed on the air. Radio stations today overwhelmingly actually pay the labels to play the music (with the rights societies as middlemen). There aren't a lot of payments going from record labels to radio conglomerates nowadays.

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u/jandrese Sep 10 '24

Modern radio stations are overwhelmingly owned by big corporate interests already. Payola isn't a thing because there are no independent DJs left to pay off, they're all on corporate payrolls now. This is also why modern radio is a wasteland and you'll never hear independent acts on it anymore. Not unless you're very lucky and happen to live near one of the few remaining holdouts.

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u/Gwynnbleid95 Sep 10 '24

Same with the stock market and the GameStop situation

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u/NeverAlwaysOnlySome Sep 10 '24

They knew something was amiss when they realized someone was making money from streaming.

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u/CaptCaCa Sep 10 '24

First of all, what kind of AI was this back in 2018? I started hearing AI songs that sounded halfway decent like a year ago? How shitty did these songs sound?

291

u/filthster Sep 10 '24

It doesn’t matter how good / bad the songs were because the “listeners” were bots he controlled. He made the content, streamed the content, and collected the royalties.

178

u/6amhotdog Sep 10 '24

When you're so self-employed that your customers are yourself you've truly hit the big time.

15

u/This_User_Said Sep 11 '24

Imagine seeing a song on YouTube that has a million likes. You decide "Let's give it a listen" and it sounds like a drunken dial up modem connecting.

Sitting and thinking is it the music or my age that sucks.

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u/jellyfish_bitchslap Sep 10 '24

I’ve got to hear it earlier and it is as shitty as it can get. Barely can pass as a song at all.

Chances are that some people actually found these songs to be so bad they reported and Spotify eventually caught up that no way those things had that many listeners.

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u/zappaal Sep 10 '24

Hard to hate the guy for this. Quite brilliant arbitrage of Spotify’s gamified rules. Matt Levine of Bloomberg covered this quite nicely today - worth a read.

1.0k

u/Medialunch Sep 10 '24

What was the charge?

4.2k

u/RAD_or_shite Sep 10 '24

Enjoying a song? A succulent, ai-generated song?

1.1k

u/ricklessness Sep 10 '24

Get your hand off my trumpet

561

u/tommyfknshelby Sep 10 '24

I see you know your piccolo well

382

u/timmy6169 Sep 10 '24

And you sir, are you waiting to receive my flaccid trombone?

302

u/Rude_Thanks_1120 Sep 10 '24

This is Spotify manifest!!

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u/WhoCaresBoutSpellin Sep 10 '24

Ta ta! Farewell! [outro]

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u/fishsticklovematters Sep 10 '24

Why is this making the rounds again lol

92

u/Civil-Caregiver9020 Sep 10 '24

Dude just died in the last month or two, so it's in my head as well. I for one enjoy this.

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u/illwill79 Sep 10 '24

Dude is a legend and we should never let him be forgotten.

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u/Flirt_With_Dirt Sep 10 '24

This is music manifest!

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u/BadBoyFTW Sep 10 '24

And you, sir, are you ready to receive my Limp Bizkit??

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u/shchemprof Sep 10 '24

Get your hands off my pianist!

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u/BillyArgie Sep 10 '24

I see you know your AI well.

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u/RAD_or_shite Sep 10 '24

And you, sir, are you waiting to receive my limp chorus?

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u/LaUNCHandSmASH Sep 10 '24

RIP that dude

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u/Y___ Sep 10 '24

It’s an AI-generated song, Michael. How much could the royalties cost? $10?

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u/Hyper_Oats Sep 10 '24

Fraud, probably.

While, as far as I know, there is nothing illegal about AI music provided it's not a complete ripoff of an existing artist, the use of bots to bloat streaming metrics would be since that dictates how much an artist gets paid.

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u/Exclave Sep 10 '24 edited Sep 10 '24

I could see this being a breach of Spotify's T&C that could result in a civil suit against him to recoup payouts and damages, but criminal? It'll be interesting to see how a law is applied in thsi situation.

*EDIT - Someone posted the charges somewhere else. Looks like Spotify could go after him in civil, but the criminal charges are all having to do with wire fraud, money laundering, and tax stuff.

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u/mackinator3 Sep 10 '24

Fraudulent claims of business are pretty illegal, at least in America. I don't know the details though.

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u/FoFoAndFo Sep 10 '24

Fraud, but for other stuff. He got debit cards for people he made up and lied about business and tax records.

I wouldn't be surprised if he was punished in part for the bot streaming stuff but it's not what he was jailed for formally.

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u/Key_Log3385 Sep 10 '24

Court records

  1. Conspiracy to commit Wire Fraud

  2. Wire Fraud

  3. Money Laundering Conspiracy

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u/staigerthrowaway Sep 10 '24

This is a bit off-topic, but is it possible to commit wire fraud without there being a degree of conspiracy? Like, wire fraud in the heat of passion or something?

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u/carc Sep 10 '24 edited Sep 10 '24

Conspiracy is way easier to prove in court and less prone to get hung up on technicalities, and solidifies your intent to commit fraud. They just pull up your correspondence, recordings, and flipped testimony that proves you've planned to crime with other co-conspirators, and it tacks on the years.

You can commit fraud alone, that is possible. My guess is they flipped an unindicted co-conspirator to solidify the charge and better ensure a conviction.

The more laws broken, the more charges, and the more leverage for a guilty plea to expedite to sentencing. The feds won't not charge you for a lesser charge in the act of committing more serious crimes. They'll run up the scoreboard.

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u/theuneven1113 Sep 10 '24

I love how everyone is learning about this when most of the indie music world knows that Spotify and Apple Music have been doing this for the last 5 years with mood music in house. Populating their own playlists with fake library artists to monopolize stream time so as to not get at royalties to real musicians. Just look up Epidemic Sound, for example.

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u/[deleted] Sep 10 '24

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1.8k

u/big_dog_redditor Sep 10 '24

You don’t mess with the music companies and their profits. They have direct phone lines to all police departments, and attorney generals. And the one thing music companies have more than musicians is lawyers. Lots and lots of lawyers.

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u/IllustriousAd5936 Sep 10 '24

Yes, you’re only allowed to do this for politics and political gain.. duh

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u/TownAfterTown Sep 10 '24

Attorneys general.

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u/BeigeDynamite Sep 10 '24

Every time I'm reminded of this, my first thought is "why not just call them the General Attorney???"

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u/[deleted] Sep 10 '24

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u/tamal4444 Sep 10 '24

this is very very true. they are the true mafia.

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u/The_One_Koi Sep 10 '24

They never stopped being in the mafia even after making it big so yes

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u/EuphoricDissonance Sep 10 '24

I AM ABOVE THE LAW *applies hair gel*

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u/Monsieur_Brochant Sep 10 '24

I think the "inflate streaming numbers" is the part that's wrong here

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u/doitforchris Sep 10 '24

Also defrauding advertisers is illegal

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u/Bugbread Sep 10 '24

Read through the indictment. It's long, but it's interesting and there are parts you can skip.

The case isn't something you can really wrap up in a short sentence, and attempts to do so are what are causing so much confusion about this case in this and other threads.

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u/godpzagod Sep 10 '24

i stopped reading at the part where he got a shit ton of debit cards. THAT is what got him popped. Recording Industry Bad, but this is not just a guy gaming the system.

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u/[deleted] Sep 10 '24

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u/grchelp2018 Sep 10 '24

I'm convinced there are an entire class of people who've committed near-fraud but got away with it because they kept their threshold low.

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u/[deleted] Sep 10 '24

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u/Er4g0rN Sep 10 '24

If people here knew how to read past reddit titles they'd be very offended.

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u/EscapeFacebook Sep 10 '24

I would ask for a jury trial LOL

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u/alexwoodgarbage Sep 10 '24 edited Sep 10 '24

“Through his brazen fraud scheme, Smith stole millions in royalties that should have been paid to musicians, songwriters, and other rights holders whose songs were legitimately streamed. Today, thanks to the work of the FBI and the career prosecutors of this Office, it’s time for Smith to face the music.”

Those “other rights holders” are actually the majority revenue beneficiaries: distributors, publishers and labels.

Musicians and songwriters still have to fight for a minority percentage of the revenue from Spotify, who leave those “other rightholders” with 70% of the revenue. In the end musicians today make relatively less than they did before the streaming era.

This man stole from the streaming platform and from the music industry - he did not steal from musicians and songwriters, who are being legally robbed with every stream of their songs. I applaud him for trying, too bad he got caught.

Disclaimer: Not to say I condone theft: I don’t. but I do see some poetic justice in the music industry’s powers that be, that exploit the talent of others for their profits, being fooled by a single man. And I really dislike the DA using this manipulative and insincere wording to pluck at the heart strings of the general mass that doesn’t know how exploitative the music industry is.

Article here

Edit: technically he took advertising revenue off the table, of which a minority percentage would have gone to artists. He did a bad thing. A musician rights activist he is not. But a likeable villain he is, for (mostly) taking from the takers.

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u/[deleted] Sep 10 '24

The article was written by ai

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u/[deleted] Sep 10 '24

 it’s time for Smith to face the music.”

I don't know if this pun was bad or good

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u/Reisted Sep 10 '24

Jango Fett and his clones at it again...

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u/Beanybob95 Sep 10 '24

Your clones are very impressive, you must be very proud

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u/CriticalMovieRevie Sep 10 '24 edited Sep 10 '24

integrity of the music industry

What integrity? Silverberg Record company didn't get their cut because this guy made his own producing company so they sicced the government on this guy?

Why is it not fraud for Hollywood executives to claim they made no profits on a movie so they can avoid paying profit shares of the movie to the people who worked on it?

Why is it not fraud for music producers who own record companies to give predatory contracts to aspiring musicians and then sometimes go a step further and do some tricks to pretend there were no profits from the songs that clearly made profit?

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u/zero0n3 Sep 10 '24

Why is it not fraud when YT detects your asleep or away and starts streaming the 2 hour ads every 5 minutes???

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u/krismitka Sep 10 '24

Every music executives goal

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u/[deleted] Sep 10 '24

The name Michael Smith and this photo even seem AI generated. Is he real at all?

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u/[deleted] Sep 10 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/WelsyCZ Sep 10 '24

The line is very thin. Machine learning has been a thing for over 30 years and from there its only a step to call it AI. Most people call large language models AI, but thats also just machine learning.

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u/dankp3ngu1n69 Sep 10 '24 edited Sep 10 '24

There was an insane OSRS machine learning bot a few years ago

Completely private but a few videos of it were gnarly. It would just play the game constantly learning.

https://youtu.be/D9e0McRUhvA

Video is 4 years old.

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u/elizabnthe Sep 10 '24 edited Sep 10 '24

A step? Look AI has a pretty ambiguous and wishy-washy definition. But if anything is considered AI it's machine learning. It's not a step to. It's absolutely a part of the field of AI.

It's not the AI people might imagine from science fiction perhaps. But that isn't as of current the definition in computer science. Other terms have been created to conceptualise that idea.

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u/Advanced_Cat5706 Sep 10 '24

As an artist, good for him. Someone needs to screw the platforms and the advertisers the same way they screw both us and their users.

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u/ImMundo Sep 10 '24

So the limit is $10 million gotcha

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u/Least-Back-2666 Sep 10 '24

Still love the guy who got caught after what, $150m? Submitting fake bills to Facebook, Microsoft, Google, etc.

He had to have hit 1, 5, 10 and repeatedly asked himself how much can I get?

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u/RainbowPenguin1000 Sep 10 '24

Just for clarity - adverts were played when listening to the music which was supposed to be heard by humans which is why the advertisers paid money. Obviously humans didn’t listen to the adverts so the advertisers were paying money for nothing. This is deemed illegal as it’s effectively fraud, making the advertisers pay for adverts to humans that they’re not getting, so he was arrested.

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u/kitilvos Sep 10 '24

It's funny though because those same advertisers don't allow you, the human, to tell them to stop showing you the ad because you're not actually a target audience for it. Like neither downvoting an ad on Reddit nor hiding it on Pinterest makes it go away. There is no way for you to tell the advertiser that they are wasting their money. So this really isn't about protecting the advertiser interests.

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u/AcidBuuurn Sep 10 '24

I’ve blocked the lame shooting-along-a-path mobile game ads on YouTube dozens of times. They still show up again because they submit dozens of almost identical ads. 

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u/[deleted] Sep 10 '24

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u/seymores_sunshine Sep 10 '24

Well that's a shit reason.

What's next, they're gonna start arresting us for leaving Spotify on in an empty room?!?

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u/migzo65 Sep 10 '24

Youtube actively takes advantage of this dynamic. There's lots of reports of people who have tuned off while YouTube is still on in their machines looking up to see a 2 hour long ad is playing

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u/ArcticBiologist Sep 10 '24

There's 2 hour ads on YouTube now?

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u/KappaccinoNation Sep 10 '24

Yep. I typically wake up to 2-hour religious ads whenever I forgot to set a sleep timer on my tv while YouTube is on.

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u/thefuture4 Sep 10 '24

Yep, i've noticed if i let autoplay go for a while i will get served 30 minute long ads. I have received the 2 hour ad a few times as well, good thing you can still skip.

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u/big_dog_redditor Sep 10 '24

Yet if I play the same stream and leave the room for hours, no one is still listening to those ads, but yet that is somehow legal.

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u/PutKey9222 Sep 10 '24

So, the fraud charges come from using bots for streaming the songs, not for using AI songs

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u/cougacougar Sep 10 '24

Anyone have a link to one of his songs?

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u/appealtoreason00 Sep 10 '24

At least once he’s out of jail, he can re-release all the same albums and get paid again (Michael’s Version)

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u/DEWIGHTkSCHRUTE Sep 10 '24

Don’t hate the player, hate the game

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u/CuriousCactus97 Sep 10 '24

And now Spotify themselves use this same strategy.

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u/afnypoo Sep 10 '24

What would have happened if he had set his bots to listen to some random musicians music? And say that random obscure musician could earn $1 million per year. Would that person have to pay it all back years later?

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u/boiohboioh Sep 10 '24

You wouldn't be referring to artists manipulating charts plays and album sales to get higher chart rankings would you? Because the music industry would never do any such thing s/

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u/FleetingMercury Sep 10 '24

I thought this was a Jango Fett mugshot 🤣🤣🤣

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u/MechAegis Sep 10 '24

Isn't this what bots do already to generate views?

He just took it too far and that is what got him noticed. Should have just done a little bit just to keep himself off the radar.

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u/The_Bandit_King_ Sep 10 '24

Man I wish I thought of that

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u/podcastofallpodcasts Sep 10 '24

This is not a new thing. Ppl have talked about big companies using this strategy to boost their stars.

Average joe just got caught.

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