If he had been less greedy, he might have got away with it.
Smith’s scheme, which prosecutors say ran for seven years, involved creating thousands of fake streaming accounts using purchased email addresses. He developed software to play his AI-generated music on repeat from various computers, mimicking individual listeners from different locations. In an industry where success is measured by digital listens, Smith’s fabricated catalog reportedly managed to rack up billions of streams.
AI music wasn’t really the point. It was the huge number of fake accounts and taking actions to avoid getting caught. But in our current age, you need to tie everything back to AI to get people’s attention. And I’ll admit: it worked on me, too.
Yes and no:
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.”
To obtain the necessary number of songs for his scheme to succeed, SMITH eventually turned to artificial intelligence. In or about 2018, SMITH began working with the Chief Executive Officer of an AI music company (“CC-3”) and a music promoter (“CC-4”) to create hundreds of thousands of songs using artificial intelligence that SMITH could then fraudulently stream. CC-3 soon began providing SMITH with thousands of songs each week that SMITH could upload to the Streaming Platforms and manipulate the streams for.
