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.
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.