{"id":15207,"date":"2025-05-20T14:35:50","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T14:35:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=15207"},"modified":"2025-05-20T14:35:50","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T14:35:50","slug":"a-billion-streams-and-no-fans-inside-a-10-million-ai-music-fraud-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=15207","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A Billion Streams and No Fans\u2019: Inside a $10 Million AI Music Fraud Case"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Almost no one<\/span> hits it big in music. The odds are so bad it\u2019s criminal. But on a late spring evening in Louisville, Kentucky, Mike Smith and Jonathan Hay were having that rare golden moment when everything clicks. Smith was on guitar. Hay was fiddling with the drum machine and keyboard. Dudes were grooving<\/em>. Holed up in Hay\u2019s living room, surrounded by chordophones and production gizmos, the two musicians were hoping that their first album as a jazz duo would finally win them the attention they\u2019d been chasing for years.<\/p>\n

It was 2017. The men, then in their forties, were longtime collaborators and business partners\u2014though they made an odd couple. Smith owned a string of medical clinics and wore tight shirts over his meticulously maintained muscles. He lived in a sprawling house in the suburbs of Charlotte, North Carolina, with his wife and six kids. He\u2019d judged on a reality TV show and written a self-help book. Hay\u2014larger, softer, comfy in sweatsuits and Crocs\u2014lived in an apartment and was dating a stripper. He loved weed. He\u2019d hustled as a music publicist for years; by reputation he was best known in the industry for promoting a nuclear rumor that Rihanna had hooked up with Jay-Z. He\u2019d recently, on an impulse, had sleeves tattooed on his arms. To avoid annoying his health-nut friend, he\u2019d sneak into his bedroom to vape.<\/p>\n

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