220
US man pleads guilty to defrauding music streamers out of millions using AI
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
220 points (97.4% liked)
Technology
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The streaming service pays them out of a pool proportionally. So he basically diluted the distribution from that pool, resulting in lower payments to everyone else.
How is that different from Spotify producing their own AI-gen music? Seems like that's 3-4 minutes of listening that otherwise would've been spent listening to an artist.
It's different when a corporation does it.
/s
The crime here was faking the play counts with listening bots, thus closing the loop. If an artist built a machine to play their own song a billion times to make them money, that would also be a crime, I suppose.
No clue
That would be the missing bit! Cheers