[natdempk]

EC2 Micros run about $0.02 per hour meaning it only takes about 5 plays per hour to be profitable, so you theoretically have ~115 plays that are profitable per hour per client, though its probably more like 100 including ads that play between songs. Assuming you can run more than 1 client per instance the numbers probably get even better. That being said if many people do this it probably gets increasingly less profitable, and also decreases the value of real listens.

Another interesting note is that the songs don't need to be silence. If you're automating this then your bots don't care if they are silent or just short and of questionable quality, which might make it easier to get the songs onto Spotify in the first place. You might even be able to get enough of them up to spread the scam among multiple artists/genres to avoid easy detection.

[loopdoend]

EC2 micros run less than half a cent per hour using spot requests, but I'm not sure why Spotify would want to pay out on obvious non-human use.

One would be better off using a large instance, perhaps running OpenVZ, and proxying the data through residential IPs.

[alecsmart1]

If this is true, then why won't a legit band do this for their own music. They can effectively get paid any amount they want.