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.
Wow. I’m a hobbyist musician. I have ~12 million listens across various streaming services and have made a whopping $45 in the two years since I finally released ~25 years worth of material. (Which is a lot of why it’s my hobby and not a living.)
I can’t imagine the numbers this guy had to pull off to make that much.
Send me a link and I can get you to ~12 million and 1 listens.
Searching my username should do it. Not sure what streaming services you’re subscribed to. It’s all on YouTube, too.
How obvious is it that it’s a bot?
Me? Honestly, I think it would be obvious to any discerning listener what music is actually made by a person, and what music is AI generated, but really, there’s so much music out there of wildly varying quality thanks to accessibility of production tools these days, it probably is literally impossible to tell the difference anymore.
I’m not so sure anymore. Udio’s output is more obvious but Suno has gotten scarily good. I’ll still always crave the human element though and I make my music for myself.
The great thing about bots is that they can listen to every song on file, 24/7/365, and you can spin up as many of them as you like. 12 million is nothing.
I have to wonder about the logistics. He can’t be running them on his own single Internet connection. Or could VPNs handle it so it would appear his listens are coming from all over the world? $10M is a lot of money. How long did it take to amass that?
Based on your numbers, ~260k plays per dollar. The person in the submission would have to get ~2600 billions plays to get $10 million.
Something does seem right with those numbers.
There are people on forums doing the same thing as the person in the submission. 1 person with ~30 phones can generate about 15-20k streams in a day doing it manually.
Humble brag alert
A little bit, for sure. Tempered harshly by the fact I’ve spent thousands of hours and thousands of units of cash on a hobby that paid me back $45. Good thing I don’t do it for the money!
I was just kidding. I’m very jealous. I’ve spent thousands and have nothing to show for it. Maybe a hundred bucks from live shows 20 years ago.