AI Bots Stole My Music

A Philadelphia folk duo called Makeshift Hammer discovered that scammers had uploaded slightly altered versions of their recordings to Spotify under fake artist names, then used bot listeners to rack up hundreds of thousands of streams, stealing royalties through Spotify's "streamshare" payment system. Because payouts are based on total stream proportions, the bots effectively siphoned money meant for the real artists. Attempts to file takedowns with Spotify and SoundCloud were largely ignored, leaving small artists with no real protection.