‘A Billion Streams and No Fans’: Inside a $10 Million AI Music Fraud Case | EUROtoday

Almost nobody hits it huge in music. The odds are so unhealthy it’s legal. But on a late spring night in Louisville, Kentucky, Mike Smith and Jonathan Hay have been having that uncommon golden second when every little thing clicks. Smith was on guitar. Hay was twiddling with the drum machine and keyboard. Dudes have been grooving. Holed up in Hay’s lounge, surrounded by chordophones and manufacturing gizmos, the 2 musicians have been hoping that their first album as a jazz duo would lastly win them the eye they’d been chasing for years.

It was 2017. The males, then of their forties, have been longtime collaborators and enterprise companions—although they made an odd couple. Smith owned a string of medical clinics and wore tight shirts over his meticulously maintained muscular tissues. He lived in a sprawling home within the suburbs of Charlotte, North Carolina, together with his spouse and 6 youngsters. He’d judged on a actuality TV present and written a self-help e book. Hay—bigger, softer, comfortable in sweatsuits and Crocs—lived in an house and was courting a stripper. He cherished weed. He’d hustled as a music publicist for years; by status he was finest recognized within the trade for selling a nuclear rumor that Rihanna had connected with Jay-Z. He’d just lately, on an impulse, had sleeves tattooed on his arms. To keep away from annoying his health-nut pal, he’d sneak into his bed room to vape.

Michael Smith and Jonathan Hay have been longtime collaborators and one thing of an odd couple.

Photograph: Jonathan Hay; Getty Images

Smith and Hay completed their album and referred to as it Jazz. That fall, they launched it on all the standard locations—Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal—and as a bodily album. Alas, it didn’t take off. Smith and Hay weren’t whole nobodies; a number of songs they’d coproduced for different artists years earlier had gotten some buzz. So the 2 males determined to retool Jazz and launch an up to date model, including new songs.

Jazz (Deluxe) got here out in January 2018. Right away, it shot up the Billboard chart and hit No. 1. Hay was elated. At final, actual, measurable success had arrived.

Then, simply as all of a sudden, the album disappeared from the rating. “Nobody drops off the next week to zero,” says Hay, remembering his confusion. He referred to as different artists to ask in the event that they’d ever seen this earlier than. They hadn’t. Questions piled up. If so many individuals had listened, why did they all of a sudden cease? He scanned the web for chatter. Even a single freaking tweet would have been good. Nada. Where have been the followers? “No one’s talking about the music,” Hay realized.

Pulling up Spotify’s dashboard for artists, Hay scrutinized the analytics for the pair’s work. Listeners appeared concentrated in far-flung locations like Vietnam. Things solely bought stranger from there. Here’s how Hay remembers it: He began receiving notices from distributors, the businesses that deal with the licensing of indie artists’ music. The distributors have been flagging Smith and Hay’s music, from Jazz and from different tasks, for streaming fraud and pulling it down. Smith advised Hay it was a mistake and that Hay had tousled securing the correct rights for samples. Hay frantically tried to right the difficulty, however the flagging continued.

Hay, panicking, badgered Smith to assist him determine what was occurring. Finally, Hay says, Smith supplied some solutions: Smith had instructed his employees on the medical clinics to stream their songs. It didn’t sound like the total story.

Then, final September, Smith turned up on the coronary heart of one other music streaming incident, this one quite epic. The FBI arrested him and charged him within the first AI streaming fraud case within the United States. The authorities claims that between 2017 and 2024, Smith remodeled $10 million in royalties by utilizing bot armies to repeatedly play AI-generated tracks on streaming platforms. Smith pleaded not responsible to all costs. (Through his lawyer, Smith declined to be interviewed, so that is very a lot Hay’s aspect of the story, corroborated by quite a few interviews with individuals who labored with the 2 males.)