Streaming bots and fake plays are shaking Hip Hop. Numbers have always mattered in music, but artificial streams are polluting the culture. The cleanest way to understand what happened with 21 Savage ...

A federal lawsuit filed Sunday in California federal court accuses Spotify of failing to prevent streaming fraud, including by allowing “billions” of bot-generated streams that allegedly boosted ...

The chatter around streaming bots grew noticeably louder in August 2025, when a prison phone call between Young Thug and an unidentified associate leaked online. During the conversation, the Young ...

A new class action lawsuit against Spotify alleges the company has “turned a blind eye” to “mass-scale fraudulent streaming” on its platform and that one musician in particular has been the ...

North Carolina musician Michael Smith was indicted for collecting over $10 million in royalty payments from Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, and YouTube Music using AI-generated songs streamed by ...

Federal authorities hit a North Carolina man with charges arising from allegations that he fraudulently earned streaming royalties through a scheme involving bots and AI-generated songs. The man, ...

Law360 (August 12, 2026, 6:14 PM EDT) -- A rapper alleging that Spotify allows fraudulent bots to manipulate streaming data once again failed to show how his commercial association with the platform ...

Tomorrow, a North Carolina record producer will become the first person in U.S. history sentenced by a federal court for AI-assisted music streaming fraud — a distinction earned by stealing $8,091,843 ...

An artificial intelligence (AI) music scandal in North Carolina was recently foiled and now, a musician faces fraud charges over his multi-million dollar royalty scheme. In a sensational case that’s ...