Michael Smith, a 54-year-old North Carolina musician, was sentenced to 18 months in prison in Manhattan on 6 October 2026 after using bots and AI-generated songs to fraudulently obtain more than $8 million (approximately £6.06 million) in streaming royalties.
In April 2023, his automated accounts generated 80.9 million YouTube Music family-plan streams, nearly nine times the 9.3 million recorded by Taylor Swift's entire catalogue in the same category that month.
The comparison did not mean Smith was more popular than Swift. His streams came from bots rather than genuine listeners. Instead, the figures showed how automated streaming fraud could manipulate royalty payments intended for legitimate musicians and songwriters.
According to the US Department of Justice, Smith, from Cornelius, North Carolina, pleaded guilty on 19 March 2026 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. US District Judge John G. Koeltl sentenced him to 18 months in prison, followed by two years of supervised release, and ordered him to forfeit $8,091,843.64 (£6.1 million).
Two Plays a Day Helped Conceal the Fraud
Smith's operation did not depend on producing a viral hit. Instead, he spread automated streams across thousands of songs to avoid attracting attention to individual tracks.
According to Music Business Worldwide, Smith's early calculations involved 1,040 bot accounts capable of generating approximately 661,440 streams daily. If those plays were hypothetically spread across 300,000 tracks, each song would receive roughly two streams a day.
The calculation illustrates his strategy rather than confirming actual daily listening figures for every track. In an October 2018 email cited by prosecutors, Smith said he needed 'a TON of content with small amounts of Streams' to avoid raising suspicion.
AI helped supply that content. Prosecutors said Smith used bots to generate billions of fraudulent streams between 2017 and 2024 and created hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs for the scheme. At certain points, he operated as many as 10,000 fraudulent accounts simultaneously.
Bots Generated Nearly Nine Times Taylor Swift's Streams
The scale of Smith's operation became particularly striking in April 2023. Federal prosecutors said Taylor Swift's entire catalogue received 9.3 million streams on YouTube Music through family-plan accounts that month.
Smith's automated accounts generated 80.9 million fraudulent family-plan streams on the same platform, approximately 8.7 times Swift's total within that category.
The comparison is limited to YouTube Music family-plan activity. It does not include Swift's overall audience on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music or other streaming services.
Nor does it represent a genuine contest for listeners. Smith's bots artificially inflated playback figures, showing how automated accounts could generate enormous streaming volumes without corresponding audience demand.
Fake Streams Diverted Royalties From Real Musicians
The financial consequences extended beyond inflated streaming figures. Streaming platforms distribute royalty pools based partly on eligible tracks' share of total streams. Fraudulent plays can therefore divert money away from musicians, songwriters and other rightsholders whose music is streamed by genuine listeners.
US Attorney Jamie McDonald said Smith flooded platforms with automated bots 'in the place of consumers' and fake songs 'in the place of creativity'. Prosecutors said the scheme allowed Smith to fraudulently obtain more than $8 million (about £6.06 million) in royalties.
The amount differs from the original September 2024 indictment, which alleged more than $10 million (£7.57 million) in fraudulent payments. Court filings later identified $8,091,843.64 (£6.1 million) as the agreed fraud-loss figure. Judge Koeltl ordered Smith to forfeit that amount following his guilty plea.
The case shows how streaming fraud can affect artists, songwriters and other rightsholders even when the financial loss attributable to any individual musician is difficult to calculate.
Streaming Platforms Had Already Flagged Suspicious Activity
Smith's activities attracted scrutiny years before his conviction. Music Business Worldwide reported that distributors and streaming platforms had flagged suspicious activity as early as 2018, although Smith denied wrongdoing at the time.
Spotify later told the publication that its anti-fraud systems had limited Smith's earnings on its platform to approximately $60,000 (about £45,453.00). That figure concerned Spotify alone, not his total fraudulent royalties across competing services.
In April 2024, Spotify introduced stricter royalty eligibility rules. Under its current policy, tracks must receive at least 1,000 streams globally over the preceding 12 months and meet an undisclosed minimum number of unique listeners to qualify for recording royalties.
Those requirements could have disrupted Smith's earlier strategy of spreading relatively few streams across numerous tracks. However, the rules do not apply to publishing royalties, and his operation later expanded significantly. Whether those safeguards would have stopped the wider scheme remains uncertain.
Smith's conviction highlights the challenge facing streaming platforms as AI makes producing large music catalogues easier. Creating AI-generated songs was not itself the offence. His crime involved using automated accounts to manipulate streams and fraudulently obtain royalty payments.
The listeners were fake, but the more than $8 million (approximately £6.06 million) in fraudulently obtained royalties was real.
