Cornelius man charged in alleged AI music streaming scheme: DOJ

CORNELIUS, N.C. ( QUEEN CITY NEWS ) — The arrest of a Cornelius man on federal charges related to the artificial inflation of music streaming is raising some eyebrows among technology experts.

Michael Smith was arrested Wednesday by federal authorities.  According to an indictment out of the Southern District of New York, Smith was allegedly part of a scheme to create hundreds of thousands of AI-created songs and use automated programs to inflate the plays of those songs in an effort to get money from music streaming services.

At one point, prosecutors alleged that Smith said his royalties could total around $1.2 million per year.

Technology and fraud experts said the practice may sound unique, but it is not new.

“It’s something we’ve seen a lot,” said Derek Ellington, a digital forensics examiner and certified fraud examiner.  “We’ve seen people do this in more of a manual way.  We see it through YouTube and Google Ads.”

The indictment alleged Smith, with the help of co-conspirators, accessed bulk email addresses, which he would then use to create thousands of accounts on streaming services.  It further alleged that he would use “bots,” or automated programs, to further control those streaming accounts, and would direct it to play AI-generated music that he owned.  It was estimated that each of these accounts could play the songs hundreds of times a day, resulting in hundreds of thousands of plays in total.  Smith is alleged to have received royalties from the plays on those streaming services, which included Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube Music.

“The new tools that have come along to make music—they can exploit the business model that has been there for a long, long time,” said Dr. Darin Hodges with Appalachian State University.

Increasingly, those services are cracking down on this type of activity, but experts noted that continued advances in technology require those companies to continuously be vigilant.

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