artifical intelligence

When Michael “Mike” Smith was indicted Wednesday (Sept. 4) over allegations that he used an AI music company to create “hundreds of thousands” of songs and then used bots to artificially earn $10 million in streaming income since 2017, prosecutors claimed that some of the money flowed back to that AI music company. The indictment also claimed that Smith was in consistent contact with its CEO — but it never revealed their names.
ASCAP/BMI Songview records and the MLC database indicate that Alex Mitchell, CEO/founder of popular AI music company Boomy, is listed as the co-writer on at least hundreds of the 200,000 plus songs that are registered to Smith. Boomy also released a song, “This Isn’t Real Life,” jointly with Smith, CVBZ and Stunna 4 Vegas.

In a statement to Billboard, Mitchell says: “We were shocked by the details in the recently filed indictment of Michael Smith, which we are reviewing. Michael Smith consistently represented himself as legitimate.”

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The indictment alleges that around 2018, “Smith began working with the Chief Executive Officer of an [unnamed] AI music company and a music promoter to create thousands of songs that Smith could then fraudulently stream.” Within months, the CEO was allegedly providing Smith with “thousands of songs each week.”

In June 2019, the indictment says that Smith reported to the AI music CEO and the promoter that “we are at 88 million TOTAL STREAMS so far!!!” Smith explained to the CEO and promoter that his streams were earning about $110,000 per month and that the two men were each receiving 10% of the proceeds. Smith later asked the AI CEO to provide him with another 10,000 AI songs so that he could “spread this out more” with his streams. The indictment states that this was “to evade detection from streaming platforms.”

Eventually, according to the indictment, Smith entered a “Master Services Agreement” with this AI music company that supplied Smith with 1,000-10,000 songs per month. The deal stated that Smith would have “full ownership of the intellectual property rights in the songs.” In turn, Smith would provide the AI company with metadata and the “greater of $2,000 or 15% of the streaming revenue” he generated from the AI songs.

“Keep in mind what we’re doing musically here… this is not ‘music,’ it’s ‘instant music’ ;)” the AI CEO wrote to Smith in an email that was included in the indictment.

Mitchell’s publisher is listed as Songtrust, a publishing administration company owned by Downtown, which typically earns a percentage of signees’ royalties in exchange for services. Smith’s publisher, Smithhouse Music Publishing, also lists Songtrust as its point of contact on Songview.

A representative for Songtrust declined Billboard’s request for comment. However, a source close to the matter tells Billboard that Smith and Mitchell’s Songtrust deals were terminated more than a year ago.

While it is not unheard of for an AI company to be approached by customers who are looking to buy a large number of songs, multiple AI music executives tell Billboard that it is common to know why the customer wants the tracks and to do “KYC,” or “know your client,” checks to ensure they are above board.

Typically, customers for large sums of songs tend to be companies that are seeking cheap music alternatives, often for social media content. Other requests tend to come from unknown individuals outside of the U.S., especially streaming fraud hotspots like Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Vietnam and Brazil. These parties are often denied. Two sources say it’s surprising to see a CEO’s name listed in the credits as a songwriter when these transactions occur.

Boomy has been at the forefront of AI music since its infancy. Records vary as to when Boomy launched in beta, with some online sources saying 2018 and others saying 2019. It officially debuted in 2021, according to an announcement from Axios. The company claims on its website to have made over 20 million AI-generated tracks to date.

Boomy has also won the respect of the music industry establishment. For years, Boomy was distributing many of its AI tracks through a partnership with New York-based music services giant Downtown. Though this partnership was in place during the same time frame as Smith’s alleged fraudulent activities, it is unclear if any of Smith’s allegedly fraudulent AI tracks were distributed through Downtown. The indictment does state, however, that Smith used two distributors to upload content from 2017-2024, one based in New York and one based in Florida.

In May 2023, Boomy told users via Discord that Spotify had shut down its ability to upload songs to the DSP and that some of their released tracks had been removed. “This decision was made by Spotify and Boomy’s distributor in order to enable a review of potentially anomalous activity,” Boomy said at the time. Spotify later confirmed that the “anomalous activity” was related to possible streaming fraud detected on certain tracks. A Spotify spokesperson said at the time, “Artificial streaming is a longstanding, industry-wide issue that Spotify is working to stamp out across our service.”

In fall 2023, Boomy announced that it had partnered with fraud detection company Beatdapp to combat streaming manipulation. A month later, Boomy also announced that it had reached a new distribution partnership with ADA Worldwide, a company under the Warner Music Group (WMG) umbrella.

WMG is one of Boomy’s top investors, making both a pre-seed round as well as a seed round investment. Other Boomy investors include Sound Media Ventures, First Check Ventures, Intonation Ventures, Future Labs, Boost VC and Scrum Venture, according to Crunchbase.

According to Songview and the MLC database, the same tracks that list Smith and Mitchell as co-writers also list a music industry veteran named Bram Bessoff, founder of promotional platform Indiehitmaker. Typically, these tracks allocate 10% of publishing ownership and royalties to Bessoff, which matches the amount the indictment indicates was paid to the unnamed promoter. Bessoff’s publisher is listed as Songtrust as well. (A source close to the matter says Bessoff’s deal with Songtrust was also terminated more than a year ago).

Bessoff declined Billboard’s request for comment, citing his cooperation in the ongoing investigation.