Feds Say AI Music Fraudster Deserves Prison For Stealing Royalties From ‘Hard-Working Songwriters’
Michael Smith claims his $8 million streaming fraud didn't actually hurt anybody, but prosecutors say he took that money from "underpaid" musicians.
Federal prosecutors have called for a prison sentence of at least 46 months for Michael Smith, 54, after he admitted to using AI to generate thousands of songs and stream them billions of times with bots, allegedly stealing over $8 million in music royalties. However, Smith argues that the harm to any individual artist was "insignificant" and that "no victim suffered any real harm."
In a filing, prosecutors emphasized that Smith spent years perpetrating a sophisticated and multi-faceted fraud scheme, diverting musical royalties from legitimate and hard-working songwriters and rightsholders to himself. They stated that he was the architect of this ongoing fraud and that a lenient sentence would send the wrong message, implying that streaming fraud would not result in meaningful punishment.
Smith was arrested in 2024 on a three-count indictment that included charges of wire fraud conspiracy, stemming from his use of thousands of bots to continuously stream songs on platforms like Spotify and Apple Music starting in 2017. He pleaded guilty in March to a single count of wire fraud conspiracy and agreed to forfeit over $8 million in streaming fraud proceeds.
Smith's lawyers have urged the judge to avoid sentencing him to prison, claiming that he has accepted full responsibility for his crimes and caused only "tiny, immeasurable losses" across millions of songwriters and artists. They argue that the impact of each individual stream on other artists' shares is not comparable to a drop in a proverbial bucket.
Written by urgent.news from Billboard's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
