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wonder w m n H rip the novels you're listening to.
Macconnorton unleashed w m n H ninety five point three.
Speaker 8: It was only yesterday.
Speaker 10: When I got the pay I had to pay the rent.
Now it's all spend.
Speaker 11: How do you carry on.
Speaker 10: When it's Oh God, I.
Speaker 8: Need to find somep gosh, I need to find them
fast money, comboddy, mindy God, Buddy, money combody Love, money God, Buddy,
Mindy com Baddy money, Combuddy Love. Don't need advice.
Speaker 12: About fries.
Speaker 10: This batherty it bothers me. I'm still in dead. I'm
not rich yet.
Speaker 4: I need a love.
Speaker 10: To keep my home.
Speaker 8: Money company, money Company, money com Babby Love, Money Company,
Monday cod Buddy money, com bamny Love.
Speaker 1: Bean andris for years years.
Speaker 10: To sell my soul. Take Tis Tove. There's no goal
down this road.
Speaker 12: If you've got.
Speaker 10: Paid, we'll take it away.
Speaker 8: Money Combay Monday com Babby Money Combuny Love.
Speaker 10: Money com Bay Monday.
Speaker 8: Come by money, Come Bobby.
Speaker 11: Money.
Speaker 10: Come buy money.
Speaker 1: Money gone by.
Speaker 5: Money, gone by.
Speaker 8: Money gone, Bobby money done, Bobby.
Speaker 10: Money gone by money, god by money.
Speaker 8: Conboy money, Come Bobby money, Cobby moneyby.
Speaker 4: That is money can't buy me love. The artist is
Andrew d V and we have him with us via WhatsApp.
We're gonna speak with him in just a moment. Welcome everybody.
If you are listening live on Saturday, we have entered
our number three newmerow trace of Matt Connerton Unleashed and
we are live from the studios of w m n
H ninety five point three FM and Glorious Manchester, New Hampshire.
And of course you can stream the show from anywhere.
Go to Matt connorton dot com, slash live for all
of your live streaming options, social media links, contact infos,
show archives, et cetera, et cetera. Jenny is here of
course at the News table, and let's bring Andrew and
I think we've got him via WhatsApp.
Speaker 13: Andrew, are you there, Yes, I'm here, loud and Clia.
Speaker 4: Hey, welcome to the show. Love that song very very catchy,
which I'm sure people tell you all the time, but
it's it's very easy to sing along to. I like
it a lot.
Speaker 13: That's good. Thanks very much for liking it.
Speaker 4: It's it's good so interestingly enough, so it's kind of
it's it's a fun song, but it's kind of a serious,
uh subject, right, And I'm really curious to know more
about it because obviously you're talking about you know, money,
money only gets you know, not only can money not
buy you love, but sometimes it can't buy you enough
to live on, you know. And and uh, and this
is a problem in many places, you know, in the
United States, of course, you know, we deal with inflation
and things like that, and where you are in the UK,
obviously you experienced these things as well. And I'd be
curious to know more. There's kind of the story behind
the song money Can't Buy Me Love.
Speaker 13: It's just from my personal experience, but I think a
lot of other people experience it as well, no matter
how hard you work, there's going to be so many
outgoings that you feel like you're left with nothing right.
And the origin of the story comes from when it
was in my early bandays. I got my first royalty
check through the post and as we're opening up the envelope,
it was a check for one hundred and twenty pounds,
and I looked out the window and there was a
total truck going past. And then I remember that I
left my car on a yellow line and because it
was broken down, okay, and it got towed away, so
go to the car pound to retrieve it, and the
to retrievement it was one hundred and twenty pounds. So
that check, that rualty just disappeared in a matter of hours.
So it's those kinds of experiences where suddenly you've got
money and then then somebody else takes it away.
Speaker 4: You know what's interesting about that too is I think
a lot of people I think this has changed over
the years, but I know that there was a time
at least in America, and this is probably true other
places as well, where people who don't know better will
assume that if you're a musician and you're making money,
you know that you're probably rich and you live in
a mansion and you've got platinum records on the wall
and all that kind of thing, and that's not how
it works. If you're very, very successful and famous, you know,
that might be how it works. But most musicians are
working class people, certainly the people that we have on
the show, and have the same struggles as everyone else,
or if not even more so, because you know, being
a full time musician certainly can be a very challenging
financially economic, a very challenging lifestyle, you know, and in
this era too, where you have streaming services like Spotify,
for example, who don't pay very much, you know, it
can be very difficult. And your story is very illustrative
of that. You know, you get that, you get that
first royalty check and then it's gone, immediately, it's gone
because you had to go and retrieve your car. And
are you surprised, like when you tell that story, do
you find that people are surprised to hear that?
Speaker 13: No, because I think things happen to them, not that
specific example, but sure both other things like if they're heating,
boiler breaks down, you know, something major happens. It's very
costly to get a tradesman in to fix it, and right,
you know, all your hard end money is going for
something that you didn't expect to happen. Right, you know,
the surprises that life throws at you as sometimes the
very hard to take, especially when there's expensive.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 13: Absolutely, back to the think about being a musician, it
can be very expensive because when people see on stage,
they think that's it, you're performing. It's great. Right behind
the scenes of the cost of rehearsals, the cust of equipment,
having to replace that, pressing records, well, that kind of thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, people have no idea what goes into it and
how expensive it is. And you know, I know that
in America, and I'm old enough to remember growing up
and watching you know, MTV and seeing videos of rock
bands and there they look like they're living this lush,
lavish lifestyle and they're they're all living in a mansion
and and you know, hanging out with Playboy playmates and
you know, all this stuff and driving these very expensive
sports cars. And then over time that sort of where
it wasn't so much rock bands because it's sort of
in the nineties, it became uncool all of a sudden
to be projecting that image and then that kind of
all shifted over to hip hop. But it's always fascinating
to me how different the reality is, or how different
the perception is, and how distorted it is in contrast
with the actual reality and the economics of the music business.
I'm curious too. You mentioned so you used to how
long have you been a solo artist? Because you mentioned
you used to be in bands. I know that you're
a veteran of the UK scene, You've been around a while.
What's kind of been your experiences You used to be
in bands and now you're strictly a solo artist.
Speaker 13: Yeah, I'm strictly a solo artist now, think you still
that round of twenty seventeen when I first started right
to my own songs, Yeah, I'm By twenty nineteen, i'd
released my first album, Northern Soul, which happened fairly quickly
because what I did was that instead of going into
the studio and recording twelve songs in one go, I
did it in three stages. I did like four songs
at a time and stasted around a few friends like drummers,
bass players, keyboard players if they just wanted to come
in and help out and surprisingly they did, and I
didn't have to pay them either, which was great sweet.
But on the album, there's so many different people helping
me out and I thought that was really really kind
of them to do that. Jack Hater from Hefner was
on steel guitar. The drummer from The Bitter Springs helped
out in drums. There was another two other drummers that
helped out as well, a couple of back end singers,
a trumpet player. So there was quite a long list
of musicians that were willing to help me out, which
I thought was great.
Speaker 4: That is yeah? Is that so in the grand scheme
of things? Is that is that more lenging in a
sense when you're recording a solo album or whatever it
is that you're doing solo. When you're recording, does that
become more challenging because you have to find the right
musicians to fit what you're doing, versus just being in
a band where it's static, you know, you've got the
same people on each song, or maybe it's not. Maybe
it's liberating, you know, because you're in total control and
you get to choose, you know, you can accept or
reject the contributions of whomever may be coming to play
on your music. I don't know, Like, how's that experience
been going from playing in bands to being a solo
artist In terms of that, well.
Speaker 13: We're playing in a band. It was a set thing.
Each person did their own instruments. Yeah, Like somebody else
asked me this question about when you were in a band,
what was the songwriting? Like, well, with that, all I
did was my young guitar parts, perhaps by the bass
player and the singer and the drummer. They did all
their own things, so I didn't, yeah, you know, interfere
with that. But being a solo artist, I've played bass, harmonica,
I programmed drums, so it's you know, I'm now responsible
for everything. So although it just take a little bit longer,
I've got more control over.
Speaker 4: It, right, Is that what precipitated you becoming a solo artist?
Did you want more control?
Speaker 6: Not so much.
Speaker 13: When I first started off, I did have a bass
player and drummer with me, but then I just got
fed up of it. Was it became like a revolving
door syndrome where somebody did leave and then you have
to get somebody else, and then somebody leave and then
you have to get somebody else it was it got
a bit to moralized, and so I just thought I'll
do this on my own at least. You know, I
was going to say I can't split up, but I
have done that a couple of times. I've had a
break for a couple of months, and then I'm sort of, well,
I've got to get back.
Speaker 4: To it, right when you take a when you take
a break, like, what causes that? Do you just need
to get away from it for a while or or
is it I mean, is there something that sort of
necessitates that taking a break from it.
Speaker 13: I think it's healthy to take a break because we're
going to do this as a solo artist, and I
tend to live it twenty four hours a day, so
just get a bit tiring. You know, you're always thinking
of lines for songs at eleven o'clock at night. You're
relaxing or concentrating on other things, and you know, it's
good to have a break, recharge your batteries and come back.
It's like with the songwriting, I'll write a couple of
songs and then I can't do anything for a couple
of months.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it looks like it.
Speaker 13: Absolutely. Yeah, having a break is good because it recharge
your batteries and then you can get new material a
little bit quicker, Like I've got a new song on
the go at the moment which is going quite well,
and I haven't done anything for weeks. Yeah, so it's
you know, it's always good to have a break, oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: And then you can kind of reapproach it with a
fresh perspective. I'm curious too about your live performances because, again,
especially someone being someone who used to be in bands,
and you know, I've played in a lot of bands.
I've never done a solo thing, but I've played in
a lot of bands, and I know that when you're
on stage with a bunch of people, there's almost a
kind of a safety and numbers thing, you know, you're
all in it together. And I've I've never I've always
been curious because I've never experienced kind of that rawness
of being at least that's how I perceive it of
being a solo artist. I've never experienced that. But I'm
curious what it's like for you in that regard. Did
you feel more vulnerable on stage making that transition, even
though you might have other musicians on stage with you,
it's still you know, you then become really the totally
the focus and and what was that like for you?
Speaker 13: I did at first because when I started solo, it
was just me with a good acoustically like a lot
of other people do. But then when I added the
drum machine and the harmonica, things got a little bit
louder and there was more more of it. So I
sort of got lost in that and was able to
focus more on doing all of that that thing and
having a louder sound. Sort of that set me apart
from another Other acoustic musicians like I seem to have
this problem at the moment where you get a lot
of open mics where there's people with an acoustic instruments
and a voice, right, But when I do them, I'm
far too loud, So I don't think they like that
kind of thing. But they won't have me on my
bands because I'm not a band, but I'm as loud
as a band.
Speaker 4: Oh that's interesting. So it sort of puts you in
this weird position, right because you're you're you're you're you're
you're as loud as the bands, but they won't put
you with the band because you're a solo artist. But
you're too loud for the You know, you're too loud
for someone who this up there with a guitar and
just sing it at the end. That's really interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 13: I did a gig in East London a while back
and I was supporting this other band who were quite loud.
I went went on and opened up for the gig
and everyone really enjoyed it. And this this guy came
up to me, came up at the end and shook
me by the hand and said you were great this
that was fantastic And I was thinking, wow, what we're done.
And you know, another thing like that happened at a festival.
Some guy been there all day. I came on and
played and at the end he just came on, came
on stage and at the end he said, wow, have
you fantastic? I've been here all day and all these
other bands haven't been so great and you've been fantastic.
So you know, it's a bit refreshing for people.
Speaker 4: I think, Yeah, and to have that validation too, you know,
that's so obviously you're you're onto something. Was that was
that challenging at all? You know, introducing UH drum programming
and your live set a drum machine. I mean that
must have taken some getting used to, right or maybe not.
Maybe it seemed natural from the beginning. I don't know,
but again that's something I've never experienced, so almost I
asked this question almost selfishly because I'm just very very
curious about that, if that was a natural transition for
you or did you have to kind of work at it?
Speaker 13: Not really, because I've been in other bands where we've
had a drum machine move it with like a semi
electronic band. Oh that was the mid nineties. We were
called cloud Bass, and I used to have like an
older Tallery computer with MIDI files and a drum machine
and we had that. We just had guitar, bass and
vocals and it was what's call It was quite quite regimented.
So you really have to fit in with the timings.
When when you've got a live drummer and everybody's live,
you know you can be a bit more loose. This
really good at being your toes because all that the
drum programs and the medio files don't wait right, You're
going to be really good with your time in. So
used to do that, but when it reintroduced the drum machine,
I knew how to a new what to expect, right,
you know, to be good with the timing of playing.
Speaker 4: Now with your album So Northern Soul, which that was
twenty nineteen, correct, Was that that your first album as
a solo artist.
Speaker 13: Technically? Oh, I don't know if you know my history,
but I think it was twenty twelve.
Speaker 11: Oh.
Speaker 13: I had this crazy idea. I was really really into
just acoustic guitar instrumentals and I thought, I know, I'll
just record it a couple of Beatles instrumentals and see
how these sounds. And I was playing them in the
car and the CD playing I thought, well, this is
good driving music. This is maybe it's maybe it's a
good idea to do it as an album, because I
went into a studio and recorded I think it was
fourteen Beatles songs okay, and I released them put them
ounta in CD, and it was an album called Well
my Acoustic Guitar gently Weeps.
Speaker 4: I love it and it's instrumental, it is it's.
Speaker 13: It's fourteen Beatles instrumentals and released that on CD and
it did okay. It's sold in lots of countries and
it seem to do okay.
Speaker 4: I'm curious as a music industry guy, was it challenging
at all? I assume did you have a label or
a distributor that you worked with, because I'm curious about
you know, if you're covering Beatles songs, that's not always
necessarily easy to get all your ducks in a row,
at least certainly not in the United States. To really
make sure you've got everything nailed down legally so that
you can do that without running in any trouble. I'm
curious about that part of it.
Speaker 13: Okay, I did that. What you have to do is
you have to apply for a license from I think
it's the MCPS Mechanical Copyright Protection Society or something, and okay,
you send them a list of songs and they'll send
you a bill for some like four hundred pounds. You
pay the bill and then they send you a license
and that allows you to press things physically in like
a CD factory. Without that license, you can't go ahead.
So once you paid for the license, you can get
them pressed and then they get delivered and then you
can send them off. And I did that again on
my own label. Oh, so do things like bang camp.
Speaker 4: Okay, Oh that sounds relatively. That's that's more straightforward than
I would have expected. That's well, that's great, okay, all right.
Speaker 13: Yeah, I didn't have to ask any permission. I think
you just just have to buy the license and that's
the only legal requirement. That'll be limited to the number
that you can press as well.
Speaker 4: Oh they do okay, okay, yeah, no, that's still though.
That's much simpler in streamlined than I would have expected.
That's that's fantastic. How was the response to it when
you released it?
Speaker 13: It was good to got good reviews and it sold
I think I remember it was USA, Canada, UK, and Japan.
It seems to sell quite well.
Speaker 4: Outstanding. Oh, very good, very good.
Speaker 13: And you know, just just from an initial tryout of
listening to it in the car.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, and this was I'm sorry about that.
Speaker 13: There's a really starting about twenty twelve.
Speaker 4: Twenty twelve, okay, that's what I was wondering.
Speaker 13: Yeah, some copies available out there somewhere. Oh wow, Okay,
it's worth checking out if a Beatle's fine and you
want to listen to something different.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I'm curious. So then okay, So
then was Northern Seoul the next thing that you released
or was there something else between between.
Speaker 13: I think it might have been the Bitter Springs in
between that I got asked by the Bitter Springs to
initially play bass for them. That's quite funny story because
I got a call from the the lead singer, Simon Rivers.
He found me up and said, do you play bass?
So I just said yes, I'm not. After I went
out and bought a bass. I played it much before,
so I got one and within a couple of weeks
we were playing gigs in the Spain.
Speaker 4: Oh I'll be damned, but you were already playing guitar.
Speaker 13: Right, Yes, so it wasn't wasn't too difficult to learn.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 11: So.
Speaker 4: I'm a bass player myself, and I know that my
fellow bass players hate when I say this, but yeah,
if you can play guitar, you can play the bass.
I mean, it's just it's just a fact. It's just
a fact. So no, So that's great, and you you
really kind of sees that opportunity. Now, when Northern Soul
came out, you got a fair amount of radio support
for that over there, didn't you. Yeah, the.
Speaker 13: The lead track off it, I think it was called
I Get the Feeling, got played on so many radio stations,
got really good feedback from it because it, you know,
it seems like quite a happy song musically, it sounds
nice and bright on the radio.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's cool. We might we might play that at
the at the end of the segment actually, because I
think I think that would be appropriate. Oh yep, I
found it. I found it online. Excellent, excellent. So then
how is your approach change? Because that was twenty nineteen,
so obviously that was seven years ago. I mean, has
your approach changed in terms of how you were recording,
writing and recording then versus how you're doing it now
with like the new single money Can't Buy Me Love,
for example.
Speaker 13: No, that was just it was a similar approach to
when I recorded Ann Sold and book a studio and
then get some friends to come and help me on
things like bass and guitar, and I do all the
other bits that That was the initial recording process. But
now I've got my own home studio where I can
record at home.
Speaker 10: So I've.
Speaker 13: Now got the problem of what I've recorded at home,
I need to take that to a studio to mix
it so we can get a better sound. That can
at home. But I'm just trying to get my head
around how to do that because I'm not very good
at this recording technology out there that can help me.
Speaker 4: So sure, sure, absolutely. We live in a time too
where there's so many different ways to do it. There's
so many different ways to record.
Speaker 12: And.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm confident you'll get it all figured out. Is
money can't buy me love? Is that going to be
on an upcoming EP or album or what's kind of
the your forward trajector there, or is this just going
to be a single?
Speaker 13: It's just going to be a single at the moment,
what I'm going to do. What I'm going to do
is just release singles. At the moment, I was gonna say,
I'm not in the mood to release an album. Yeah,
but I just want to write a good song, record
it and then release it. And then then I was
thinking about this the other day. Once I've done like
twelve singles, I can release it and call it the
greatest hit.
Speaker 4: That's a good idea. Well, you know, and a lot
of artists who now they kind of do, you know,
because when I was growing up, it was, you know,
every everybody released albums or you might see an artist
occasionally release an EP, mostly albums, you know, and then
you'd have singles from that album. Usually first single goes
to radio six to eight weeks before the album, and
then if the album comes out and it goes well,
then you get a second single, maybe a third. But
now a lot of artists are doing just literally the
inverse of that. They release a series of singles that
eventually coalesce into an official album. And nothing wrong with that,
you know, in terms of I mean algorithmically, I think
it works well with Spotify and some of these streaming services,
so yeah, not a bad approach.
Speaker 13: I was thinking about, you know, the singles the albums thing,
because with like things that Instagram and Spotify, albums still valid.
People's attention spans are quite short now, you know, it'll
probably only stretch to about thirty seconds to a minute
on Instagram or song on Spotify.
Speaker 11: So.
Speaker 13: You know, an album doesn't see it seem valid to
me at the moment, right, I'd rather just like go
at the flow and release something, promote that, hope it sells,
and then move on to the next thing, YEP, which
it is good because I'm building up like a set
list for live gigs as well, get it, you know,
to get it, get it longer and longer, right, so
when I play live, that would be my album.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, there you go. That makes sense. That makes sense.
Speaker 13: Just that Instagram thing and people's people's attention to things
seems to be quite small at the moment, always sticking
through their phone, listening to something for ten seconds and
then they look at something else.
Speaker 4: And yeah, absolutely, absolutely, well Andrew, it's it's wonderful to
have you on. Like I said, we really like the
song money Can't Buy Me Love, and we will certainly
spend that again in the future. And you know, the
next single when whenever that is? I mean, do you
know when your your next single? Do you have an
eta on when the next one might be out? Or
I know you're focused on money Can't Buy Me Love
at the moment, So I don't know if you if
you have any idea, because we'd love to play the
next one too when it's ready, But I don't know
if you if you have kind of an idea of
when that might be.
Speaker 13: There will be something out. The Money Can't Buy Me
Love singles done quite well. So that spared me on
to think about releasing something else. And I've got another
song called Time Waster, which is ready to go, and
I'm just thinking of a time, maybe July or September
to release that, okay, And it's a similar sort of
format harmonica, guitar, drum machine with a strong harmonica hook.
But this song is about it's good. It's about fellow musicians.
Although the musicians who came into the studio were great,
the other musicians. You said that you played bass. It
must have been in bands before. And you know, have
musicians act headline slats of festivals built building up and
there might before musicians just ring me up and say
oh I can't do the gigs and all right. Yeah,
so that that really got me. I just thought, why
are they like this.
Speaker 10: There?
Speaker 13: Old time wasted? So Time Wasted is a song about
musicians wasting your time?
Speaker 4: Oh that is that is perfect? And yeah, anyone who's
ever anyone who's ever been a musician, and you know
we all know the pain of that.
Speaker 13: In a band.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, absolutely absolutely, Andrew. So before we let you go,
where's the best place for people to go to keep
up with everything that you're doing? Where should they go online?
Speaker 13: It's my main website, which was andrewdv dot com. You'll
find everything you need to.
Speaker 4: Know there outstanding, outstanding. No, that's easy, that's easy. So
in a moment, we're gonna play. Uh, I'm gonna play.
I get the feeling. I'm really curious to hear that
and to share that with our listeners. But it's been
wonderful to talk with you today, and we'll definitely do
this in the future. It sounds like you've got a
lot of a lot of new music coming up in
your future, so we'll absolutely have you back when the
next singles ready, and we will keep in touch. But
I really want to thank you for being with us today.
Speaker 13: Thanks very much, just being a pleasure.
Speaker 4: All Right, we will do it again in the future.
My friend, I'm going to hit this track and we'll
let you go for now, but we'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 13: Okay, Thanks very much.
Speaker 4: You got it. Bye bye, hey bye bye. All right.
That is the great Andrew Devi and he's got the
new single money Can't Buy Me Love. But right now
we're going to play. This is a previous track that
he mentioned. He's had a lot of success with This
came out on Northern Soul back in twenty nineteen, and
let's give this a listen. This is called I get
the feeling.
Speaker 10: I got the feeling. So what I believe in when
I'm sitting next to you, that chats are real good
because it's a open.
Speaker 6: And I don't know what to.
Speaker 10: When you're Wellness said it By, I just know going bye.
I always know that I got Bie. I know, I
said of one of why I I understand that watch
y'all deb that I know all the things that you
lay major.
Speaker 4: I shut up guys.
Speaker 11: By discussed.
Speaker 10: I have so because of you.
Speaker 12: My well, it's just typed.
Speaker 10: Now it's no you go it by. I always though
that I got By and now I said, I was
so why and by ol it's just tip by Now
it's not get it five.
Speaker 4: I always know.
Speaker 10: That I got.
Speaker 14: I Now I said, I don't wanna go away.
Speaker 4: That as I get the feeling. That is Andrew DV
from the album Northern Seoul. And thank you again Andrew
DV for joining us today. That was great to speak
with him. Of course, we did feature his brand News
single money Can't Buy Me Love, and I really enjoyed
that a lot too. This is Matt Connorton. Unleashed. We
are live, of course from the studios of WMNH ninety
five point three FM, and of course you can stream
the show from anywhere. Go to Matt connorton dot com
slash live. We do have a little bit of time
some music industry news here. This is from Music Businessworldwide
dot com. I guess it was only a matter of
time before something like this happened. Streaming fraud man who
pocketed eight million dollars using hundreds of thousands of AI
songs streamed billions of times by bots pleads guilty. So
this guy set up a pretty elaborate scheme here, it says.
The man at the center of what's been described as
the first ever criminal prosecution for AI assisted streaming fraud
in the US has pleaded guilty. Michael Smith of Cornelius,
North Carolina, pleaded guilty on March nineteenth to one count
of conspiracy to commit wirefraud before US District Judge John G.
Coelty in the Southern District of New York. By the way,
I feel like wirefraud is anything that isn't specific to uh,
you know, if it's not shoplifting or murder or something,
it's wirefraud. You ever feel like that, Like, just wirefraud
is like this weird sort of catch all.
Speaker 14: Well, because it ended up morphing into the Internet.
Speaker 4: Right, anything involving anything electronic winds up becoming wire fraud.
Speaker 10: Yep.
Speaker 4: The charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
Smith has also agreed to pay over eight million dollars
in forfeiture. Why does he actually still have it as
just sitting in a bank account somewhere? I wonder I
like it? Smith? The schedule to be sentenced on July
twenty nine. US attorney Jay Clayton said, quote, Michael Smith
generated thousands of fake songs using artificial intelligence and then
streamed those fake songs billions of times. Although the songs
and listeners were fake, the millions of dollars Smith stole
was real, millions of dollars in royalties that Smith diverted
from real deserving artists and rights holders. Unquote. So the
guy so he figured out, I mean, it's creative and ambitious.
He figured out how to create all these AI songs
and then create bots that would stream them. Because obviously
the more streams you get, the more money you get
if you're the artist, That's that's the thing right there.
Speaker 14: It's not so much the creating the songs with AI
as it is the creating the bots and getting them
to play the songs over and over and over against
so he could get money. Right that that's the that's
the real stinky part. Yeah, And in that I do
agree that it is taking money away from johenuine artists.
Speaker 4: Right it says. Smith was first arrested in September twenty
twenty four in what was the first criminal case of
its kind in the US. Like I said, it was
inevitable at that time. He was charged with three felony counts,
wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy, each
carrying a maximum sentence of twenty years in prison. As
Music Bausiness Worldwide report it, Smith initially pleaded not guilty
in front of the judge in September twenty twenty four
and was released on a half million dollars bail. And
by the way, if any of those charges sound redundant,
wire fraud, wirefl broad conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy. You know
when they when they charge you with these things, they
they try to charge you with everything they possibly can, Right,
So that see what can stick, see what can stick,
or if there ends up in.
Speaker 14: Charge per instance. So if there's one instance and then
there's another instance, then that's two charges.
Speaker 4: And if there ends up being an opportunity for some
sort of a plea deal, you don't want to you know,
if you're the prosecutors, you want to be able to
negotiate from you know, you want to have as many
things on the table as possible, right, so you know,
if you in other words, if the uh, if the
defense wants to plead something down, well you got to
have as many things available to plead down from.
Speaker 12: Right.
Speaker 4: Yep. So it says today's guilty plea to a single
conspiracy count carrying a max so they did. They did
a plead down carrying a maximum of five years rather
than the combined sixty years he previously faced. Represents a
significant reduction in Smith's legal exposure. According to the charging
documents and statements made in court, Smith created thousands of
bought accounts on streaming platforms including Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify,
and YouTube Music, and used software to cause those accounts
to continuously stream songs that he owned. Smith spread his
automated streams across thousands of songs to avoid triggering the
platform's anti fraud detection systems. To obtain the volume of
tracks needed for the scheme to work, Smith turned to AI,
using it to generate hundreds of thousands of songs Wow.
Those songs were streamed by his bought accounts billions of times,
allowing him to fraudulently collect more than eight million dollars
in royalties. At the peak of his operation. According to
the Department of Justice, Smith estimated that his bots could
generate approximately six hundred sixty one thousand, four hundred forty
streams per day, yielding annual royalties of over one point
two million. The Mechanical Licensing Collective the MLC, which distributes
mechanical royalties from streaming in the US, played a key
role in identifying the fraud scheme. In a statement following
today's guilty plea, the MLC said, quote, Today's news highlights
the serious threat that streaming fraud poses to the music
industry and the important role the MLC plays and confronting it.
We appreciate the Department of Justice's swift action, recognizing that
the MLC identified the fraud early, challenged Smith and his
representatives and prevented the diversion of mechanical royalties away from
rightful songwriters. The MLC will continue to invest in anomaly
detection and fraud prevention to protect our members, and we
will continue to collaborate with other industry organizations and law
enforcement to protect all songwriting royalties unquote. The MLC had
previously raised concerns about Smith's catalog, questioning how he could
produce such a high volume of music so quickly. Smith
and his representatives denied at the time that his works
were AI generated.
Speaker 14: Well, of course, he's trying to game the system, and
he did. His problem was he was too greedy. He
didn't quit while it was head.
Speaker 4: Now he's in jail. Yeah, well that's what happens. I
mean true, you know, that's that's how people get caught.
They get greedy.
Speaker 14: Yep, you know, thousands of songs though. Wow, Yeah, he
definitely was was determined. Yeah, but it is crappy if
that's happened. With that happening that it does rip off
for a artist, because you know, all he's doing is
just game in the system. With these bots that are
playing the song. It's not human, nobody's hearing it for real.
It's just a computer program playing repeat.
Speaker 4: But also in doing that, you know, everything that you
do online leaves a digital footprint. It's like he had
to know on some level eventually he was going to
get caught, unless he was just so blinded by his screen.
That's something I'm always fascinated by when when I see
stories like this is the psychology of it is very
interesting to me because they must know on some level,
whether they're admitting the admitting it to themselves or not.
Maybe it's subconscious, but they must know they're going to
get caught because everything that you do online, you know, it's.
Speaker 14: Like a bank I think they think they're not going
to get caught. Maybe they're going to get away with
it because they figured something new out, or maybe they
figured out how to use the computer a different way.
Speaker 4: Bank robberies always make me think about this too, Like
whenever I see a story, I ever hear of one
getting away. Well, that's the thing. Whenever I see a
story about a bank robbery, it's always to me, it's
always like people still even attempt to rob banks. There's
there's no chance you're going to get away with it.
Speaker 14: When's the last time you heard of somebody actually getting
away with it. It doesn't happen exactly. I mean Bonnie
and Clyde didn't get away with it in the year,
you know, twenty twenty six. With all the technology that
we have, nobody's getting away with that. But where people
still try, Like somebody will still walk into a bank
and just hand the teller a note and think that
they're gonna that they're gonna get away with it. Why
do you think there's so many Karen videos? What do
you mean there's so many videos of people doing bad behaviors? Yeah,
because people too bad behaviors fite the fact.
Speaker 4: That you should be smart enough to know there's a
camera everywhere. Well, yeah, but I'm talking. I'm talking specifically
about crime and just the things that people think they're
going to get away with or you know, same category
in my book or the or the cup. Well we
you know, we open the think they're gonna get away
with it. Look what we opened the show with the
cops rated Afroman's home. Yep, they didn't get away with it.
There were cameras all throughout away thought they were going
to get away with that.
Speaker 14: Yeah, then when they realized there were cameras, they cut
the cameras, but that was too late.
Speaker 4: Yep. Yeah, and that just made them look all the
more guilty. The other question this raises in my mind
is how many other people are doing this? You just
haven't been.
Speaker 14: There's gonna be some kind of a program that allows
people to create these bought accounts as well. Yeah, because
on the other side is seeing that as a.
Speaker 4: Human Yeah, well, this guy was obviously very very smart.
I mean, he's probably got a genius now, yeah, but
he's probably well, I mean, his judgment is one thing,
but in terms of being able to pull this off,
and he's probably got a genius level IQ to be
able to figure out how to do all that and
then get away with it for as long as he did.
Speaker 14: Create a thousands of Like, how do you create that
many songs? How do you create that many accounts?
Speaker 13: Right?
Speaker 14: I can't imagine how many bought accounts he had right
to get them to play enough to get him that
kind of money?
Speaker 4: Yeah, what was it a mill a month or something
like that? No, one year? Oh, a year? So he
did this over the course of years, Like you got
a million go away right, right? Yeah, you do it
for a year and then you get out. Yeah, take
a million and go comfortably. Take a million, invest it,
and you know, live comfortably for the rest of your life.
Speaker 14: But not not not greed, grotesque greed.
Speaker 4: Ah, yes, do we not talk about that all the time.
I don't want to give anybody the wrong idea though.
We're not suggesting that it would have been okay if
he had just done this for a year. And you know, no,
we're not condoning it. No, we're not condoning crime. I mean,
this is criminal activity, and.
Speaker 14: It thinks because it takes a lot of attention away
from real artists. And plus those illicit plays are going
to show up, they're gonna try and make those songs
go viral by their plays. Yeah, so it messes up
a lot for a lot of real people and real artists.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's stinky. Absolutely, it was a little bit
more to this. The case was prosecuted by the Complex
Fraud and Cyber Crime Unit of the US Attorney's Office
for the SDN Y. Assistant US attorneys Nicholas Chucciello and
Kevin Mead led the prosecution. The original indictment named unnamed
Oh this is interesting, named unnamed coke conspirators, including the
CEO of an AI music company and a music promoter
who helped Smith produce the AI generated tracks. The legal
status their legal status has not yet been publicly disclosed. Oh,
because one of the things he was originally charged with
was conspiracy. Smith's case, I'm not the price that there
are other people involved. Yeah, yeah. His case is the
highest profile criminal prosecution for streaming fraud globally, but it's
not the only one. In Denmark, a man was sentenced
to eighteen months in prison in March twenty twenty four
after being found guilty of data fraud and copyright infringement
for using bots to inflate the stream count on six
hundred and eighty nine tracks uploaded to platforms including Apple Music,
Spotify and you See Music. That sentence was subsequently increased
by to twenty four months by the Western High Court
of Denmark in February of twenty five after judge has
found evidence of more extensive fraud than initially proven. So
apparently in their system in Denmark you can jeopardy. They
could just your sentence. Wow, I think they can do
that in the US too. It just doesn't happen for
I feel like I feel like there was a weird
case charged with something. There was something in the United
States where something like that was done, and I think
that this was a while ago. I'll have to look
it up. I think there's something like that was done
where a judge, a higher court judge, overruled somebody else's
Oh you know what, I think it was, so a
judge had reduced somebody's sentence and then another judge overturned
the reduction and restored the original sentence. It was something
weird and it was it was no, not exactly, but
well it did effectively add more time. But there was
something weird like that that happened in the US that
made people really upset. Because it's in theory so that's
not supposed to happen. But anyway, while we are almost
out of time, you want to remind people about mosaic
before we go.
Speaker 14: Absolutely go check out the mosaic Our Collective. Currently the
Woman Wise exhibit is up and the exhibit will be
up until the thirtieth of this month. The gallery is
located at sixty six Hanover Street, Sweet two one right
here in the Queen City of Manchester, and go to
the mosaic Ourcollective dot com. To check out the open
calls right now of clear to Me and shaping ourselves
and submit your work. If you want to find out
more information about me and the good trouble I get into,
go to Gencoffee dot com, j E N N co
O f f Ey dot com.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, and if you want to know more about me
and everything I'm up to, you can go to my
website Matt connorton dot com. And especially if you'd like
to book a hypnotherapy session, and if you go to
Matt connorton dot com slash hypnosis, that page has been
recently updated, so a little bit of streamlining done there,
so that'll help you if you'd like to book a
session or a free consultation. And if you miss any
part of a show, of course, it will be up
in just a little bit at Matt conorton dot com
slash live. No I'm sorry, no, just at just Matt
condorton dot com slash archive, I apologize, and of course
Wmnhradio dot org. I confuse there, It's okay, Well, you
know what it is. I'm distracted by the itching in
my eyes. It is uh, it is that sea, it
is spring and everything is in blue. My eyes are itchy,
but I can take something for that. Thank you again
to Ricky Mapleton for joining us. I was last minute things,
so yeah, that was that was a lot of fun
and of course I Andrew Devi and congratulations once again
to Afroman. I think we should end the show as
we started with some Afroman. We'll play this, uh, the
track that kind of started it all with this whole
saga with the police in Ohio. Will you help me
repair my door? Will you? And that's it for us
for now. We'll talk catch you a little bit later.
Bye everybody, bye bye.
Speaker 12: Will you help me repair my gay?
Speaker 11: Will you help me repair my door?
Speaker 12: Did you find what you.
Speaker 4: Was looking for? Will you help me repair my gay
and door?
Speaker 11: Would you like a slice of living pound cake? You
can take as much as you want to take them
must be a big mistake. Would you like to have
a slice of my limon pound care? The warrant said,
narcotics said kidnapping? The warrants said, narcotics and kidnapping? Are
you kidding? I make my money rapping. Why does the
warrant say narcotics? Well, I know narcotics, but why kidnapping?
Let me ask you something opposerte any kidnapping victims inside
my suit pockets? Are there any kidnapping victims inside my
soup pockets?
Speaker 4: You cooked cops need to stop it.
Speaker 11: They're off No kidnapping.
Speaker 4: Victims in my soup pocket.
Speaker 15: Let me ask you another question.
Speaker 11: Is there a thousand tounds of weed in my soup pockets?
Is there a thousand pounds of weed in my soup pockets?
You cooking cops need to stop it. There's not a
million pounds of weed in my soup hockets. Let me
ask you something else. Any kidnapping victims inside my CD?
Any kidnapping victims inside my CDs? The Adams County Sheriff's Department,
you can get these. There are no kidnapping victims in
my in my CDs? How many pounds of weed are
inside my CDs? How many pounds of weed are inside
my CDs?
Speaker 4: Adams got to share? You can get these.
Speaker 11: How many pounds of weed did you find in my CD?
Why are you stealing my money? Why are you stealing
my money? You represent the LUH and it's funny you're
still in my legal work.
Speaker 12: Hard every day?
Speaker 11: Hey taxes money. The sheriff disconnected my cameras. The sheriff
disconnecting my cameras.
Speaker 4: The sheriff should be locked up in slammers.
Speaker 11: The Adams County Sheriff Department disconnected my camera.
Speaker 15: Did you have to traumatize my kids? Did you have
to traumatize my keys? Did you have to traumatize my keys?
Did you have to traumatize.
Speaker 10: My keys?
Speaker 12: Will you pay me for doing wrong? Will you pay
me for doing merong? Will you pay me for doing merong?
Speaker 4: Will I have thicket?
Speaker 11: Pay?
Speaker 4: From this site?
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