Very good probability of both of those things, although calling the number of bands "wild" makes me assume he had something like 1,000 of these bands. Definitely fraud in that case, although I applaud the effort.
I assume most of these music platforms have some sort of rules about how and when you can call one band different from another, to prevent artists from treating every song or album as a separate band to game the algorithm.
Regardless of how you feel about him, its one guy behind every band, making it deceitful for the purpose of financial gain which is the legal definition of fraud.
Even if he made his own legit songs, and then view botted until he was paid $10m, it would be fraud. Creating fake listeners to receive payments under false pretenses is the slam dunk fraud.
Flooding them with AI music is probably a TOS violation. But if real people were listening to the ads on those bands, the platform wouldn't give shit beyond maybe banning accounts. I kind of doubt there's going to be charges related to that part unless they just use it to say, "he spread it out to make it harder to detect, proving that he knew what he was doing was fraudulent."
Edit:
"We need to get a TON of songs fast," Smith emailed his alleged co-conspirators in late 2018, "to make this work around the anti-fraud policies these guys are all using now."
Okay. He already made that argument for them. And I guess it was royalties rather than ad payouts.
Generally, its because there are other elements making the band different. Producers or other band players that make the band not exactly the same.
Its nonsense, but its also nonsense that has been going on for a century in the retarded Music Industry and is almost certainly coded into the current Music App ToS in some way. The only reason its relevant now is because of the abusability of bots on Ad Money, otherwise the only reason it would ever come up is for dumb shit like insurance or unions.
Using bots to boost his engagement and "make millions". The AI bands might be fine (may be against Spotify TOS) but artificially boosting engagement is definitely fraud.
Yeah this is Ponzi scheme level of "well duh, of course that would be punished eventually". The elites only get away with similar because they share a cut with the correct local dons and only some of their business is fraudulent, like good organized criminals.
Going purely con and purely independent is how you get made an example out of.
If it was me making the post, I'd just take the argument of "they only don't like it when they lose, because they use bots all the time for this shit".
If the law doesn’t exist, that kills revenue systems for basically every content creator of any kind that doesn’t make their own site and find their own advertisers from scratch. And while I’ll agree that many content creators and several of the platforms would make me happy by failing, your idea of “legalize royalty/ad fraud” is insane, with far too many consequences. Go on, present your side of the argument: if I enter into an agreement where I tell a person “if I make a thing, you can distribute it and then we’ll split the revenue” and then I intentionally deceive them into giving me money by faking the distribution numbers, why is that okay?
I've come across many screenshot posts on .win from several years ago where the post's content is no longer available, making it impossible for me to see what the post was about. So no, screenshots are not forever.
Since there are some advantages to both, then I would argue that people should provide both a screenshot and an archive link. It doesn't take much time at all, and that way you get the best of both worlds.
There are alternatives to wayback machine, and you can also download the archive to your own computer if you're worried about the website taking it down.
Also, archives allow those of us who actually read past the clickbait title (wild I know!!) the chance to learn more about the situation and glean, instead of just reacting to clickbait and reacting like an NPC.
The entire online ad industry where they pay per click is fundamentally flawed anyway.
While having bots click the links automates the process, it's essentially no more fraudulent than those mobile games that reward you for clicking on ads or watching videos. Nobody is really paying attention, they're just clicking to get whatever the game is rewarding them.
Ultimately there's no way to measure the "quality" of the click, as in whether or not the person clicking it is even paying attention, and it's also easy to outright fabricate clicks, which I believe Google has been accused of doing in the past.
Sure it is. The advertiser paid you for displaying your ad to a person. If they ignore it, aren't in the room, instantly close it, etc. is the end-user's choice. The advertiser knows this too. You still fulfilled your obligation to the advertiser as the app developer as long as you did what you claimed to.
I'm not crying to advertisers but the difference is very clear cut. If you trick a user into clicking via fake "X" in the UI and things like that... that's a different story.
it's plausible but there's not a chance in hell he was making "millions" from it.
either way he was probably arrested for not paying taxes
Very good probability of both of those things, although calling the number of bands "wild" makes me assume he had something like 1,000 of these bands. Definitely fraud in that case, although I applaud the effort.
What exactly would the fraud be?
I assume most of these music platforms have some sort of rules about how and when you can call one band different from another, to prevent artists from treating every song or album as a separate band to game the algorithm.
Regardless of how you feel about him, its one guy behind every band, making it deceitful for the purpose of financial gain which is the legal definition of fraud.
You're missing the obvious part for the AI twist.
Even if he made his own legit songs, and then view botted until he was paid $10m, it would be fraud. Creating fake listeners to receive payments under false pretenses is the slam dunk fraud.
Flooding them with AI music is probably a TOS violation. But if real people were listening to the ads on those bands, the platform wouldn't give shit beyond maybe banning accounts. I kind of doubt there's going to be charges related to that part unless they just use it to say, "he spread it out to make it harder to detect, proving that he knew what he was doing was fraudulent."
Edit:
Okay. He already made that argument for them. And I guess it was royalties rather than ad payouts.
How is that different from one songwriter being behind multiple meatbag bands? Either way it's one creator being marketed through several fronts.
Generally, its because there are other elements making the band different. Producers or other band players that make the band not exactly the same.
Its nonsense, but its also nonsense that has been going on for a century in the retarded Music Industry and is almost certainly coded into the current Music App ToS in some way. The only reason its relevant now is because of the abusability of bots on Ad Money, otherwise the only reason it would ever come up is for dumb shit like insurance or unions.
Using bots to boost his engagement and "make millions". The AI bands might be fine (may be against Spotify TOS) but artificially boosting engagement is definitely fraud.
Speaking the truth here
that would be called ad-fraud.
also,
Yeah this is Ponzi scheme level of "well duh, of course that would be punished eventually". The elites only get away with similar because they share a cut with the correct local dons and only some of their business is fraudulent, like good organized criminals.
Going purely con and purely independent is how you get made an example out of.
If it was me making the post, I'd just take the argument of "they only don't like it when they lose, because they use bots all the time for this shit".
But whatever.
don't be mad when the law gets applied accurately. be mad when the law is overlooked for the right people.
To hell with that, that law sucks and blind statism is stupid.
If the law doesn’t exist, that kills revenue systems for basically every content creator of any kind that doesn’t make their own site and find their own advertisers from scratch. And while I’ll agree that many content creators and several of the platforms would make me happy by failing, your idea of “legalize royalty/ad fraud” is insane, with far too many consequences. Go on, present your side of the argument: if I enter into an agreement where I tell a person “if I make a thing, you can distribute it and then we’ll split the revenue” and then I intentionally deceive them into giving me money by faking the distribution numbers, why is that okay?
I found an archive of this article from yesterday. Here is the link:
Wayback link Man Arrested for creating fake bands
Archive.ph link: Man Arrested for creating fake bands
Archive: Easily deleted on order from Taylor Lorenz
Screenshot: Forever
I've come across many screenshot posts on .win from several years ago where the post's content is no longer available, making it impossible for me to see what the post was about. So no, screenshots are not forever.
Since there are some advantages to both, then I would argue that people should provide both a screenshot and an archive link. It doesn't take much time at all, and that way you get the best of both worlds.
There are alternatives to wayback machine, and you can also download the archive to your own computer if you're worried about the website taking it down.
Both: Accomplishes all tasks at once
Also, archives allow those of us who actually read past the clickbait title (wild I know!!) the chance to learn more about the situation and glean, instead of just reacting to clickbait and reacting like an NPC.
And yet other wins, which get shit done, are just fine with screenshots while some on this win sperg out about them.
As an actual sperg: Enough mental masturbation.
And Lefties are fine with a teardrop and "he touched me :(" before they organize a lynch mob and burn down 12 towns.
That's not the slam dunk you think it is.
Eh. Not like you can stop what's coming anyway.
Optimists doing shit and doomers doing shit.
Despair is poison to action.
This reads like those astroturf articles about "man loses house and car after downloading music" from the 90s
The entire online ad industry where they pay per click is fundamentally flawed anyway.
While having bots click the links automates the process, it's essentially no more fraudulent than those mobile games that reward you for clicking on ads or watching videos. Nobody is really paying attention, they're just clicking to get whatever the game is rewarding them.
Ultimately there's no way to measure the "quality" of the click, as in whether or not the person clicking it is even paying attention, and it's also easy to outright fabricate clicks, which I believe Google has been accused of doing in the past.
Sure it is. The advertiser paid you for displaying your ad to a person. If they ignore it, aren't in the room, instantly close it, etc. is the end-user's choice. The advertiser knows this too. You still fulfilled your obligation to the advertiser as the app developer as long as you did what you claimed to.
I'm not crying to advertisers but the difference is very clear cut. If you trick a user into clicking via fake "X" in the UI and things like that... that's a different story.
OP's attention span ran out before he got to the end of the headline.
At least it wasn't Obscurest Vinyl.
That guy made genuinely funny music.
Here's my favorite.
modern problems require modern solutions
Based.
I love everything about this.
Was the ai music good though?