BBC Trending: The dark side of music streaming - podcast episode cover

BBC Trending: The dark side of music streaming

Feb 05, 202518 min
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Episode description

In September last year, musician Michael Smith of North Carolina was charged with stealing millions from music streaming services. The US Department of Justice has accused him of using artificial intelligence tools and thousands of bots to fraudulently stream songs billions of times - taking millions of dollars of royalties which otherwise would have been paid to real artists. The case has been labelled as ‘unprecedented’ and ‘the first of its kind’. But could fraud on music streaming services actually be much more prevalent than any of the platforms let on? BBC Trending speaks to music industry insiders, and those fighting back against streaming fraud.

BBC Trending: The dark side of music streaming | The Documentary Podcast - Listen or read transcript on Metacast