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Michael Smith, a 54-year-old North Carolina musician, was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The Justice Department said he used automated accounts to stream AI-generated songs he controlled and must forfeit $8 million in royalties.
Michael Smith, a 54-year-old musician from North Carolina, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for conspiring to defraud music-streaming services with automated plays of songs he controlled, the US Justice Department said October 6. Smith must also forfeit $8 million in royalties that prosecutors said he earned through the scheme.
Smith pleaded guilty in March to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. According to the Justice Department, his activity ran from 2017 until his arrest in 2024. The department said he created as many as 10,000 fraudulent accounts and used them to stream his music, much of it generated with AI.
Prosecutors said Smith’s automated accounts played hundreds of thousands of songs billions of times. He distributed streams across thousands of tracks, rather than concentrating them on one song, to reduce the chance that unusual listening patterns would draw attention. The $8 million forfeiture represents royalties the department said he fraudulently obtained.
The Justice Department cited activity on YouTube Music in April 2023 as an example. It said Smith’s accounts used family plans to generate 80.9 million streams of his AI-generated music that month. For comparison, the department said Taylor Swift’s entire catalogue received 9.3 million streams on the service through family plans in the same month. Those figures are the department’s example of the scale of the alleged manipulation, not a full account of Smith’s streaming activity.
How Bot Streams Redirect Royalties
The case shows how automated listening can affect the royalty pools shared by streaming services. When artificial plays are counted as genuine listening, payments may be directed toward music associated with those accounts instead of reflecting real audience activity. The Justice Department said Smith’s scheme took royalty payments from genuine artists and their fans.
The sentence also brings a criminal penalty and financial forfeiture in a case involving AI-generated music and streaming fraud. It does not establish that using AI to make music is itself illegal. The conduct at issue, as described by the department and covered by Smith’s guilty plea, was the use of fake accounts and automated streams to obtain royalties fraudulently.
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A Scheme Operating Since 2017
The Justice Department said Smith’s activity began in 2017 and continued until his arrest in 2024. During that period, the department said he used a large number of accounts and spread plays across a broad catalogue. Distributing streams in that way was intended to make the listening appear less conspicuous than repeatedly playing a single track, according to the account of the scheme.
The department’s press release described Smith as a musician and said much of the music was made using AI. The report also notes that the phrase “super intelligence” in US Attorney Jamie McDonald’s statement reflects terminology the Trump administration directed government employees to use in place of “artificial intelligence.”
Details Beyond the Sentence
The Justice Department’s announcement and the cited report do not provide a detailed accounting of how the $8 million in royalties was divided among platforms, or how much any individual artist’s payments were affected. The 80.9 million and 9.3 million figures refer to the department’s specific YouTube Music family-plan comparison for April 2023; they do not describe total streams across all services or the entire period of the scheme.
The available information also does not identify every platform involved or explain what technical measures detected the activity. Smith’s guilty plea establishes his admission to the wire-fraud conspiracy charge, but the announcement does not detail any separate civil actions or platform responses.
Prison Term and Forfeiture
Smith is to serve the 18-month prison sentence and surrender the $8 million in royalties under the court’s order. The supplied Justice Department announcement does not state when he is expected to report to prison or describe additional conditions attached to his sentence. No further court dates or related enforcement steps were identified in the report.
Key Questions
Who is Michael Smith?
He is a 54-year-old North Carolina musician who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with automated streams of music he controlled.
What sentence did Smith receive?
Smith was sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to forfeit $8 million in royalties, according to the Justice Department.
How did the streaming scheme work?
The Justice Department said Smith created as many as 10,000 fraudulent accounts to play his songs automatically. He spread the streams across thousands of tracks to make the activity less conspicuous.
Does this case make AI-generated music illegal?
No such conclusion follows from the information provided. The case concerned fraudulent accounts and automated streams used to obtain royalties, not AI music creation by itself.
What does the 80.9 million figure refer to?
The Justice Department said Smith’s accounts generated 80.9 million family-plan streams on YouTube Music in April 2023. It compared that figure with 9.3 million family-plan streams for Taylor Swift’s entire catalogue on the service that month.
Source: hn
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