Faker’s Ball
An alleged scammer has been arrested under suspicion that he used AI to create a wild number of fake bands — and fake music to go with them — and faking untold streams with more bots to earn millions in ill-gotten revenue.
In a press release, the Department of Justice announced that investigators have arrested 52-year-old North Carolina man Michael Smith, who has been charged with a purportedly seven-year scheme that involved using his real-life music skills to make more than $10 million in royalties.
Indicted on three counts involving money laundering and wire fraud, the Charlotte-area man faces a maximum of 20 years per charge.
With bona fide artists struggling to make ends meet via music streaming services, Smith allegedly worked with the help of two unnamed accomplices — a music promoter and the CEO of an AI music firm — to create “hundreds of thousands of songs” that he then “fraudulently stream[ed,” the indictment explains.
“We need to get a TON of songs fast,” Smith emailed his alleged co-conspirators in late 2018, “to make this work around the anti-fraud policies these guys are all using now.”
Around that same time, the CEO of the AI music company, which also has not been named, began allegedly providing the musician with “thousands of songs” on a weekly basis. Smith in turn would then use automation to generate tons of listens for the crappy tunes.
“Keep in mind what we’re doing musically here,” the CEO wrote in an email to the defendant that the DOJ released, “this is not ‘music,’ it’s ‘instant music’ ;).”
Name Game
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.
When reached by the New York Times regarding the extremely well-documented allegations of fraud and streaming platform manipulation, Smith issued a hilariously affronted statement.
“This is absolutely wrong and crazy!,” the NC man rebutted. “There is absolutely no fraud going on whatsoever! How can I appeal this?”
More on fake music: Spotify Is Filling Up With AI-Generated Music to Scam Revenue From Real Bands
