Here’s a great business opportunity. Well OK it’s illegal but there’s real money here.
A man in North Carolina has made $10 million dollars in royalties from Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube by using AI to create thousands of fake bands with hundreds of thousands of fake songs which he uploaded to the streaming services. Then he programmed bots to ‘listen’ to the songs and generate royalty checks.
Federal marshals arrested him last week.
Can’t blame a guy for trying. 
So the crime is basically that he made money?
I’m no lawyer but if you make money fraudulently, that’s illegal.
“WHAT CONSTITUTES FRAUD
Under common law, three elements are required to prove fraud: a material false statement made with an intent to deceive (scienter), a victim’s reliance on the statement and damages.”
Fraud is illegal, but this is new ground legally and the accused will have his day in court so who knows, maybe the charges will be thrown out. Here’s the indictment and explanation from the US Attorney’s office.
I was mostly kidding, but it’s just funny to me how corrupt (powerful) people in the music industry were/are, but that seems to be just fine. lol
I just read “Dangerous Rhythms” by TJ English which is the history of the connection between organized crime and jazz. I have to wonder just how much difference there really is between the mob and the so-called legal/legitimate music industry.
I thought this video covered it really well…
He’s probably only as corrupt as Spotify.
I’d be happy if he just kept their money.
That would be cool, but according to the US attorney:
“Each time a song is streamed through one of the Streaming Platforms, the songwriter who composed the song, the musician who performed it, and in certain cases other rights holders, are entitled to small royalty payments. Royalty payments are made proportionately to musicians and songwriters, so that streaming fraud diverts funds from musicians and songwriters whose songs were legitimately streamed by real consumers to those who use automation to falsely create the appearance of legitimate streaming.”
So as I understand it Spotify has it set up so that Mr. Super-Streamer isn’t getting Spotify money, he’s getting OUR money.
The beat goes on.