Update, October 7, 2026: Michael Smith was sentenced on October 6 to 18 months in prison, with two years of supervision and forfeiture of $8,091,843.64 — well below the 46 months prosecutors had requested. Here is what else happened this week. The text below was written before the hearing.
The comparison that stopped everyone
In April 2023, a catalog of songs nobody had heard of racked up 80.9 million streams from YouTube Music family-plan subscribers. Taylor Swift's entire discography got 9.3 million from the same listeners that month. Prosecutors say that is almost nine times as many — and that none of those listeners were real.
The songs were generated with AI. The "listeners" were bot accounts. On Tuesday, October 6, a federal judge in Manhattan decides how much prison time the man behind it will get.
Who he is and what he admitted
Michael Smith, 54, lives in North Carolina and was prosecuted in the Southern District of New York — federal court in Manhattan. In March 2026 he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
- Hundreds of thousands of AI-generated tracks, uploaded to Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube Music.
- Up to 10,000 bot accounts active at the same time, with email addresses bought in bulk, mostly under fictitious names.
- More than six years: prosecutors date the scheme back to 2017.
- $8,091,843.64 in royalties — the agreed loss figure and the forfeiture amount. He received more than $14 million in total from royalty-paying entities, prosecutors say.
- Two others are named only as an unnamed co-conspirator and the CEO of an AI music company.
The 2024 indictment gave the mechanics: Smith wrote in emails that he could generate about 661,440 streams per day from roughly 1,040 bot accounts, at around half a cent per stream. He targeted multi-account family plans and spread the plays over a huge number of tracks so no single song looked suspicious.
«Although the songs and listeners were fake, the millions of dollars Smith stole were real.» — U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton
Why this money was never "free"
Streaming platforms don't pay each play from nowhere. Royalties come from shared pools, so every fake stream moves a small slice of money away from real artists and rights holders. Prosecutors argue exactly that: the $8 million was diverted from songwriters and artists whose music people actually chose to hear.
That is also why the AI part is almost a side detail. The crime is not "making music with AI". The crime is manufacturing listeners. The same fraud works with stolen songs, slowed-down copies or random noise — a 2024 Danish case involved other artists' tracks with changed tempo and length.
What Tuesday decides
- Prosecutors: at least 46 months in prison, the bottom of the 46–57 month guideline range.
- Probation office: 24 months.
- Defense: probation, arguing Smith initially believed his conduct was lawful and that the rules on fraudulent streaming were unsettled.
- Maximum: five years. Judge: John G. Koeltl.
It is described as the first U.S. criminal prosecution for streaming fraud. In Denmark, a man was sentenced to 18 months in 2024 for bot-inflated streams, and Music Business Worldwide reports that sentence later rose to 24 months. This piece was written before the hearing — the sentence is not known yet.
My take, as a producer
I make deep house, so I live in the royalty pool this case is about. Fake plays are not competition. They are a tax on everyone who releases real music for real listeners.
The platforms are already drawing lines: read how ARIA banned fully-AI music from Australia's charts, and my weekly briefing on Deezer's flood of AI uploads. And if you want to see what real, human growth looks like, here is how I made a viral deep house remix. The honest answer to fake streams is simple: music that people choose.
Sources
- Music Business Worldwide — prosecutors' sentencing letter, figures, 80.9M vs 9.3M
- Law Commentary — sentencing positions and defense argument
- The Record (Recorded Future News), March 20, 2026 — guilty plea, co-conspirators, Jay Clayton quote
- Digital Music News, Sept. 4, 2024 — the original indictment and how the scheme worked
- Music Business Worldwide — the Danish streaming-fraud sentence
