do you know this man? He may look like a default character in a Warhammer 40K Space Marine game, but he's very real and has become a very real boogeyman to the music industry. He was recently arrested on a series of charges, and they're basically treating this guy like Cobra Commander for what he's done. He stole directly from music distributors, and the way that he was able to do this, make off with upwards of $10 million in royalties over the course of 7 years, is through a really interesting scheme that I imagine a lot of others are doing behind the scenes, and it's something the music industry themselves also does in broad daylight, but he got slapped hard for it. So what he did is he created a lot of AI songs and flooded streaming platforms with them, and then had tens of thousands of bot accounts perpetually streaming those songs that he owned, and he would collect royalties from all of those botted stream numbers. His name is Michael Smith; even his name sounds AI-generated. But you want to know

what AI could never generate goof juice. It's the best flavor ever made. It's actually perfection, and AI can't do that. Also, Gamer Subs right now is having a big special where you can get free shipping to anywhere in the world using code moist. So pick up some goof juice, best flavor ever, Gamer Subs. g/m moist, and he's getting his ass spread open here by the FBI now. So the FBI assistant director said the defendant's alleged scheme played upon the integrity of the music industry by a concerted attempt to circumvent the streaming platform's policy. I love how they just unironically said the integrity of the music industry. What integrity? What kind of [__] laughable joke is that? No such thing. And like I mentioned at the beginning, the music industry is guilty of botting numbers as well, but that's different. It's totally epic when the music industry does it for themselves. That's just swag style business, baby. The FBI remains dedicated to plucking out those who manipulate advanced technologies to

receive illicit profits and infringe on the genuine artistic talents of others as alleged. Michael Smith fraudulently streams songs created with artificial intelligence billions of times in order to steal royalties through his brazen fraud scheme. Smith stole millions in royalties that should have been paid to musicians, songwriters, and other rights holders whose songs were legitimately streamed. Today, thanks to the work of the FBI and the career prosecutors of his office, it's time for Smith to face the music. You know that guy that said that had the biggest [__] smirk on his face? That was his mic drop moment where he put the sunglasses on. I also couldn't help but actually scoff when they said with a straight face that he took money away from the artist that would have been paid through these streaming platforms. Brother, look around. The musicians make the littlest piece of that pie. The actual entities that make the lion's share of the money through streaming platforms for music are distributors, publishers, and labels. The actual creative, the artist behind the

work. They get the tiniest cut of that cake. They get a Ural cake more than anything. They just get served little dog shits on a plate. They don't see most of that money in the first place. As someone who uses Spotify for our music project, the Gentlemen, I can tell you firsthand the Spotify royalties for the artist. Two thumbs way down that boo boo big boo throw tomatoes. The main people hurt by his scheme were the AI-generated zombies that run the music industry. The music industry was the one that was directly affected the most. I do think there is an argument in a strong case to be made that because he was pumping so many streams to his songs, he was taking some of that marketing, like advertisement money, away from other artists because those ads were instead getting played on his streams that weren't real. So, I do think he did end up taking some money away from some of the other artists on the platform, but the main people that were affected was just the music industry directly. He's not like a hero.

or anything, but it's hard to feel sympathy for the victim here because of how corrupt the music industry is. Now, the way he did this, I think, is pretty interesting, and it's something that I think a lot of other people are doing to a lesser scale than Smith was. So, to carry out the scheme, he created thousands of bot accounts on music streaming platforms: Amazon, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and then used software to make the accounts constantly stream the songs he owned. Smith estimated that he could generate 661,000 streams per day, which would get him 1.2 million a year. But he wanted to avoid streaming it all to a single song because he recognized that that would be pretty suspicious and would probably get the kabash put on his operation pretty quick. They'd find it. So, he then identified the need for thousands of songs that he could pump these fraudulent streams into because it would keep the number low enough because he'd be spreading the 660,000 streams a day across thousands of songs, so it wouldn't really be setting off anyone's

alarm bells. But if all of it filtered into just one or two songs, you know you got Now That's What I Call Butthole 28. You know, getting 660,000 streams per day, someone's going to notice and start to piece together that, uh, something's a little fishy here. So that's when he turned to some co-conspirators about needing to get a ton of songs fast, and there's nothing faster than AI. What I find really surprising, though, is that this is in 2018, so this is very primitive AI. And he contacted a chief executive officer of an AI music company, and together they generated hundreds of thousands of songs for this. The names that the AI spit out were pretty trash, except for one: Calm Baseball. That name bangs. That right there, I could see that name in lights. Calm Baseball now performing at Madison Square Garden. Like, like someone's got to take that. It's too good to just let wither and die, to fade away. But that's the strategy in

a nutshell. So, he created tons of fake artists, tons of fake music, and tons of fake streams, and collected a lot in royalties from it. Now, I think there are a ton of people doing this. I think there are a lot of people that aren't flying as close to the Sun as Michael Smith did with over $10 million that they're raking in. Michael Smith was going fast and loose here, going hog wild with the amount of money he was making from this. But I think there are a large number of people that are doing this exact thing with smaller numbers, because Michael Smith would have never been caught if he didn't make so much from it. And I'm sure every single one of you watching this, if you use Spotify, you've stumbled across one of these AI cesspools, like this [ __ ] latrine of AI-generated music, and some of it's got hundreds and thousands of listens to it. I think those accounts are doing exactly what Michael Smith did, but instead of making off like Scrooge McDuck with 1.2

million a year. They're probably doing something smaller, like $100 or $200,000 a year, through this same technique in order to stay invisible to the upper echelon of the music industry. That's my guess, and if I'm wrong about that, I don't think I will be for long because now that this story has blown up, I think there are going to be tons of copycats that are going to do this exact same thing. Bots have become so prevalent. I know this gets tossed around all the time with like dead internet theory and all of that, but unironically, the data has shown more often than not, the people you interact with aren't people at all. They're not blood, flesh, cringe, and come. They are bots, and a lot of the things and content you consume doesn't even come from humans either. It comes from bots. So, it's one of those things where if it's not already happening in a big way on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, all that, it's going to very soon now in

the case of Michael Smith. He's being charged with wire fraud conspiracy, wire fraud, and money laundering conspiracy, and could face a maximum of 20 years in prison per count. And I've got a hunch that the music industry is going to do everything in their power to make an example out of Michael Smith to try and scare people away from emulating what he's done. I think they're going to throw the book at him to make it a deterrent from copycats because if more and more people start doing what Michael Smith was, the music industry is going to be in some deep doo-doo. It's a very hard thing for them to combat against. Like, look at how long Michael Smith got away with it. And again, the only reason he got caught is just because of how much money he was pulling in. But if people stay at lower amounts that they're making from it, I don't think they have the ability to find all of them. I so I think they're very scared of this becoming a bigger

problem for them, and I think they're going to do everything in their power to [ __ ] Michael Smith. But anyway, I just wanted to talk about this a little bit. That's it. See y

Music Industry is in Big Trouble

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