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 1 month ago by ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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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[–] Starbuncle@lemmy.ca 27 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The solution, to me, would seem to be to divide the revenue up on an individual basis instead. Does some sort of licensing issue prevent this? I'd think that the legitimate record labels would want to fix this loophole ASAP so that they can get more money.

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 41 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

AFAIK YT Music does this. The money from your subscription gets divided amongst whatever you listened to.

That still wouldn't address the stolen account problem, but yes, it'd be a huge improvement.

I have no idea why Spotify still sticks to this massively exploitable model, except for the fact that it MASSIVELY inflates their stats for investors and advertisers.

[–] Starbuncle@lemmy.ca 23 points 1 month ago

exceot for the fact that it MASSIVELY inflates their stats for investors and advertisers.

Ah yes, the Reddit strategy.

[–] MunkysUnkEnz0@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's super cool to know. Seems more fair than the way Spotify does it?

[–] person420@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 1 month ago

Google has been doing it with YouTube for as long as there has been a paid version of it. If you're a premium subscriber, the creators you watch get a portion of your subscription based on how much you watch them. It's why premium subscriber views are worth more than free views.

That's why IMO YouTube premium is worth it. My subscription supports the creators I watch and I get no ads.