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.
Removed by mod
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.
Removed by mod
Ah yes, the Reddit strategy.
That’s super cool to know. Seems more fair than the way Spotify does it?
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.
Fuck Spotify, they can eat a bag of dicks after renewing Joe cum-guzzling Rogan for $200million. They deserve to have all of their money stolen.
Removed by mod
I didn’t realize it was a thing. Thanks for taking the time to explain!
It seems like it would be super easy for them to close this loophole. If you use the model that free tier listeners (real ones) will listen to about the same distribution of songs as the paying listeners, then just stop counting all free tier listeners and multiply the amount paid out for the pay-tier listeners by an appropriate factor to make payouts the same as before.