[matt3D]

If I understand this correctly he uploaded AI generated songs and then used bots to sign up for free accounts and stream them to generate royalties.

In which case the prosecutor's statement doesn't really make much sense:

> "Through his brazen fraud scheme, Smith stole millions in royalties that should have been paid to musicians, songwriters, and other rights holders whose songs were legitimately streamed,"

It wasn't other artists who lost out, it was advertisers paying for bots to listen to their ads.

[michaelmarkell]

Artists do not get paid per stream on Spotify + many other DSPs. The platform sums up all of the ad revenue and divides it pro rata among all of the streamed artists. So the fraudulent streams dilute the pie for legitimate streams.

[daghamm]

The advertisers budget is a fix amount. The more to this guy, the less remains for others.

Even if advertiser money was infinite, existence of bot listeners can reduce the "value" of each played ad.