“One billion currents, not fans”: within the issue of music fraud of $ 10 million

Almost no one Hit it greatly in music. The possibilities are very bad. It is a criminal. But on the spring evening at the end of spring in Luisville, Kentucky, Mike Smith and Jonathan Hi, this was the rare golden moment when everything clicked. Smith was on the guitar. The straw was filled with the drum machine and the keyboard. The men were Groove. The musicians were meditating in the living room in Hay, surrounded by Chordophones and Gizmos, and they hoped that their first album was winning as a jazz duo at the end of the attention they were chasing for years.

It was 2017. The men, then in the 1940s, were long cooperating and business partners – although they made a strange couple. Smith has a series of medical clinics and wore tight shirts on his muscles that were accurately maintained. He lived in a sprawling house on the outskirts of Charlotte, North Carolina, with his wife and six children. He ruled in a realistic TV program and wrote a book for self -help. Hay – Larger, the most softening, comfortable in sweating and crocodiles – lived in an apartment and was dating back to a stronger. He loved herbs. He ascended as music propaganda for years; Through the reputation, he was known in the industry for promoting nuclear rumors that Rihanna had reached Jay Z. He was recently, on a motive, he sniffed on his arms. To avoid disturbing his healthy friend, he was sneaking into his bedroom to VAPE.

Michael Smith and Jonathan Hi have long been collaborating and something from a strange couple.

Photo: Jonathan Hi; Gety pictures

Smith ended up and called her album and invited her jazz. In that fall, they called it all the usual places –Spotifyand Apple MusicTide and islands – as a material album. Unfortunately, she failed to take off. Smith and Hai were not the total Nobs. Some of the songs they performed for other artists years ago got some of the ducts. So the two men decided to re -equip jazz Issuing an updated version, adding new songs.

Jazz Music (Deluxe) He went out in January 2018. In the end, real and measurable success reached.

Then, suddenly, the album disappeared from the arrangement. “No one will decrease next week to scratch,” says Hai. He called on other artists to ask if they had seen this before. They did not. Standed questions. If many people listen, why did they stop suddenly? He wiped the internet for gossip. Even one exciting tweet was nice. Dew. Where was it? Fans? “No one talks about music,” Hi realized.

When pulling the Spotify information panel for artists, Hay examined the analyzes of the husband’s work. The listeners appeared in distant places like Vietnam. Things are only strange from there. Here is how Hi remembers: He started receiving notifications from distributors, and companies that deal with the license of independent artists. Distributors knew Smith and Hai music, who jazz Other projects are for fraud and withdrawal. Smith Hi told that it was a mistake and that Hi had spoiled the insurance of the rights appropriate for the samples. Try the straw in a feverish form to correct the problem, but the report continued.

Straw, panic, slit Smith to help him know what was happening. Finally, Hi, Smith, says some answers: Smith issued the instructions of his employees in medical clinics to broadcast their songs. It didn’t look like a full story.

Then, last September, Smith appeared in the heart of another incident of the flow of music, this is somewhat epic. The FBI arrested him and accused him at first Amnesty International The case of fraud in the United States. The government claims that between 2017 and 2024, Smith made more than $ 10 million of royalties using robot armies to play on an ongoing basis paths created from artificial intelligence on broadcasting platforms. Smith acknowledged that he was not guilty of all charges. (Through his lawyer, Smith refused to conduct interviews with them, so this is a large part of the story of the story, which was confirmed by many interviews with the people who worked with the two men.)