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Musician Charged with $10M Music Streaming Fraud Aided by AI
- ipnon 2y agoThe AI bit of the story is a bit of alarmist spin. As alleged he simulated traffic to music streaming sites and received royalty for it, even though no one created the music being "played" and no one was really listening. It's quite fraudulent on the face of it.
- Turneyboy 2y agoAI allowed him to avoid detection for a long time. It allowed him to create thousands of songs so that the each one would only get moderate amounts of streams thus not raising suspicion. Had he created songs by hand they would rack up millions/billions of botted streams but them not being international hits anyone had ever heard before would have made it obvious botting behaviour.
- skeeter2020 2y agoWhat about the "Musician" part? Seems like the headline should be "AI Musician aided by Computer Programmer in Complex Artificial Streaming Scheme" or similar
- aithrowawaycomm 2y agoThis would be a very dumb way of phrasing the situation, because the “AI musician” doesn’t have any understanding what the scheme is, it was entirely a plan of the human conspirators. It’s exactly as childish and stupid as saying “gun aided by human shooter in murder.”
- squeaky-clean 2y agoThis wording insinuates that the AI Model is the one profiting from the scheme and the programmer merely helped.
- weego 2y ago"Person who broke into car aided by rogue hammer"
- rightbyte 2y agoWhat was the fraud? Not listening to the ads? I guess he wasted bandwidth. The fraudulent behaviour is on the part of the streamers. There should be no cross user account royalty dependecy.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- skobes 2y agoHe used bots and fake accounts to stream his own songs, thereby dishonestly profiting. The AI is not really relevant except that it made the crime harder to detect.
- Cheer2171 2y ago> The fraudulent behaviour is on the part of the streamers. He was also coordinating the botnet streamers. From the first sentence of the first paragraph of TFA: > a scheme to create hundreds of thousands of songs with artificial intelligence and use automated programs called “bots” to stream the AI-generated songs billions of times.
- Cheer2171 2y agoOn a completely unrelated note, I call for the repeal of the HN rule that forbids me from calling out commenters for having not read the first sentence of the first paragraph of the fine article. rightbyte, your laziness contributes nothing to this forum and it would be better if you deleted your account. Your comment was bad and you should feel bad.
- rightbyte 2y agoCome on. It is not an article and I have read it. My point is that I see the streaming payout scheme as fraudulent. It is a block box 'trust me bro'. Clearly, it is possible to abuse it and the streamers want to be the ones doing it. I understand perfectly well what the FBI and music industry think is the fraud. They wanted some other label to have the money.
- uklamb 2y agoAt least the so called musician exposed the emptiness of AI generated content. It is so bad that only AIs "listen" to it. I'd prefer if the "justice" department used its resources to go after those who launder intellectual property.
- simonw 2y agoThis has been running for a long time: > SMITH spread his automated streams across thousands of songs to avoid anomalous streaming as to any single song. SMITH was aware that if, for example, a single song was streamed one billion times, it would raise suspicions at the Streaming Platforms and the music distribution companies that those streams were the result of streaming manipulation. A billion fake streams spread across tens of thousands of songs, however, would be more difficult to detect, because each song would only be streamed a much smaller number of times. As a result, SMITH repeatedly identified the need for more songs as crucial for facilitating the fraud scheme. For example, on or about December 26, 2018, SMITH emailed two coconspirators that, “We need to get a TON of songs fast to make this work around the anti-fraud policies these guys are all using now.” What kind of AI generating music tech were they likely to have been using in 2018?
- miohtama 2y agoAI has very little do with it. You can take any MIDI file, randomize it and call it "music". Artistic freedom. Streaming services do not validate file content at all, or at least did not in the past. They only care about copyright infringement.
- Cheer2171 2y ago> What kind of AI generating music tech were they likely to have been using in 2018? Techno demoscene style music. It's amazing what you can do with just 4kb.
- kthejoker2 2y agoJohn Cage literally composed music by rolling dice in the 1950s You can listen to it on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/album/1TwLLLOArGizLfbzR2Pbgi https://open.spotify.com/album/1TwLLLOArGizLfbzR2Pbgi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleatoric_music?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleatoric_music?wprov=sfla1 But even crazier is so did Mozart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musikalisches_W%C3%BCrfelspiel?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musikalisches_W%C3%BCrfelspiel...
- in12parsecs 2y agoI couldn't read this beyond, "... played upon the integrity of the music industry...".
- mhuffman 2y agoOutside of literal cults and criminal organizations, I can't think of an industry that has duped, robbed, swindled, abused, and destroyed people at the same pace as the music industry. And generally, it is just hand-waved over in court.
- tim333 2y agoCrypto maybe? I've got a friend who was trying to do a more ethical music company but the winner take all economics are tricky where most fans give their money to Taylor Swift and similar, leaving the other 99.9% unprofitable.
- Animats 2y agoIt's not clear that this is illegal. Violating a site's terms of service isn't criminal hacking.[1] That's been decided by a court. It's more like financial engineering. This person did create music: "24. The AI technology that CC-3 used to generate AI songs for MICHAEL SMITH, the defendant, improved over time, making it less likely that the Streaming Platforms would detect the scheme. For example, in an August 17, 2020 email, CC-3 wrote to SMITH, "Song quality is 10x-20x better now, and we also have vocal generation capabilities. . . . Have a listen to the attached for an idea of what I'm talking about." They paid for thousands of accounts on Amazon, Spotify, etc. to stream music. Those accounts were paid for with real money, not stolen credit cards. That streaming can generate a bigger royalty bill than the payments required to receive the content is a business model problem at the streaming companies. [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/court-violating-a-sites-terms-of-service-isnt-criminal-hacking/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/court-violating-...
- jsheard 2y agoThere's tons of precedent for click fraud on traditional ad networks being classed as criminal wire fraud, with multi-year prison sentences getting handed out for it, and faking music streams to get a bigger cut of Spotify's ad revenue is just click fraud with extra steps.
- evrydayhustling 2y agoNot a lawyer but while the streaming seems to be fraudulent, it's less obvious from the evidence presented that the generation itself was. Does anyone believe this sets a precedent for generated content in specific? Ed: oops I see the charges have specific quotes about intent to evade detection
- Animats 2y agoA hypothetical: what if you actually play out the music? Suppose you offer a car app which does something useful. In addition, when the car is not in use, it quietly plays background music inside the car. The music is audible if someone is inside the car, but is not loud enough to be audible outside the car. Now use this to play content for which you get royalties.
- oldlaptop 2y agoAlleged musician, surely.
- f0ney 2y agoIs the music good?
- lesuorac 2y ago> SMITH, 52, of Cornelius, North Carolina, is charged ... and money laundering conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Would love to see the money laundering explain. From the indictment it seems to claim that its inviolation of "Title 18, United States Code, Section 1956(a)(1)(B)(i)." Which states "to conceal or disguise the nature, the location, the source, the ownership, or the control of the proceeds of specified unlawful activity; or" [1]. So, receiving money from unlawful activity counts as money laundering? That seems to be at odds with my layman definition of it. Like it just seems like a double-jeopardy violation, you commit fraud for money and get dinged for both fraud and money laundering from the same crime? [1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1956 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1956
- Cheer2171 2y agoSounds like he also tried to launder the profits of the fraud. If you set up a bunch of different bank accounts registered to different names or LLCs to collect all the profits of an illegal scheme so it doesn't look like a huge amount of money in each account, that's an additional money laundering charge versus if you put all the profits from a scheme in the same bank account.
- josho 2y agoWhat you described is exactly what real estate folks do. They put each property they own under a separate LLC. There are legitimate reasons to use different bank accounts and legal entities to conduct business. So the defendant needs to show that they had legitimate reasons for different accounts.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- plaguuuuuu 2y agoAI generated music isn't the issue. I'm pretty sure pop song production is tool-assisted.
- Ekaros 2y agoSo my take is that music streaming platforms do zero quality control. Not that fraudulent streams are right either.
- rollcat 2y ago> So my take is that music streaming platforms do zero quality control. Where's the line between that and requiring every service that allows media uploads to build a YouTube-esque content ID system, that would cost north of €/$/£100m and still be inaccurate/gameable? inb4 "extracting monetary value" - can you come up with a fair definition that still clearly and unambiguously allows e.g. an aspiring opera singer to upload a demo of their own performance with their CV/application? 20th century's ideas of copyright have so far scaled incredibly poorly into the digital age. 30 years ago nobody expected an average (but highly motivated) Jane/Joe to be able to afford recording an album OR launching a company literally from their bedroom, yet both are now everyday occurrences.
- mjburgess 2y agoSo someone arbitraged the cost of receiving + uploading a stream against Spotify's payment terms? Would this have made any difference if a person was listening to those streams? The fundamental "problem" for Spotify is that this arbitrage exists. It's unclear if any analogous behaviour would count as fraud. Eg., if a taxi company pays $x/mile, and fares are $y/mile, and f(x - y) is "just right", I can drive around with an empty taxi and make money. It "feels" like fraud because it's free money, which is basically what arbitrage is -- but in most cases we think its the market's problem to fix, not a legal one. If this approach involved paying for lots of user accounts, using those accounts to stream music, uploading that music yourself, generating that music etc... then there shouldn't actually be a problem. You have paid for the songs you've listened to. So spotify should have, in place, some system to stop users listening to more songs than their subscription covers. If they arent doing this, then the law isn't going to help. Their biz model has a clear iteration-to-zero in it.
- rvnx 2y agoIt's the same situation as if you built WordPress websites using ChatGPT ("auto blogs"), registered them on Google AdSense and ordered bots to visit your website and click on your ads. It is clear fraud.
- mjburgess 2y agoNo, because here to listen to music on Spotify you pay a subscription price. You're paying Spotify to download music, they're paying you to upload music. There's an arbitrage in that pricing model which means you can pay less to down load than you earn from upload. There's no reason that should be possible. It's only like that because they're burning investor money to fund it. The answer is for Spotify to properly manage downloading so that people who download music are actually paying for it. If you need 100 accounts to download 1,000,000 plays then whatever Spotify has to payout for those plays has to come from those 100 accounts. Whether those accounts are bots or actual people doesn't change the irrationality and going-to-zeroness in the business model. EDIT: Unless they're using ad-funded free-to-play accounts, which is more of a problem. Specifying exactly what the fraud is here is difficult. They arent providing music deceptively, they arent fraudently downloading it -- it may be against TOS, but spotify isnt being sold anything in that download. If there's some sort of hybrid-way of talking about fraud here, its really across both actions (uploading knowing that users wont listen to ads?) and (downloading without listening to ads?). It comes down to exactly what transaction terms we think are implied in the upload. You're not selling something to spotify. Likewise, when you download, you arent buying anything.
- polotics 2y agoDoes anyone know of any links to any of these slop songs?
- neilv 2y ago> it’s time for Smith to face the music.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vdy8JYpTkr4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vdy8JYpTkr4
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- spyder 2y ago"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 at the end of cases like this if they can recover the "damage" cause by the fraud will the artists get a compensation based on recalculated stats or the streaming company just pockets the money? I know in cases of ad click frauds sometimes Google compensates but that's a little different and I'm curious if there was cases for this on streaming platforms.
- jumhyn 2y agoFor those that are arguing that this is simply a legal arbitrage, or financial engineering of some sort, I suggest reading the actual indictment. From page 4: > at relevant times to this Indictment, a Manhattan-based music distribution company ("Distribution Company-1 ") [...] required customers, such as SMITH, to "agree not to engage in (or to permit, encourage, enlist, retain, or employ third parties to engage in) [...] any activity and/or method which involves the artificial creation, by human or non-human means, of online or offline plays on audio and/or audio-visual streaming services, where such plays do not represent bona fide end-user listening and/or views initiated by genuine consumers and taking place in the reporting country." The issue here is not a TOS violation on the subscriber side. Smith had an obligation not to engage in streaming manipulation as an artist receiving royalty payments, and deliberately skirted that obligation (while attempting to conceal his activity) with the intent of inducing Spotify to pay him royalties which he was not legitimately owed. That's fraud.
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