Imagine you have 0 fans, but millions of streams. 🎧 We investigate the industrial-scale fraud crisis rocking the music industry, where AI-generated noise is stealing $2 to $3 billion a year from real artists.

1. The "Calm Knuckles" Conspiracy: We break down the landmark criminal case of Michael Smith, who allegedly used AI to generate hundreds of thousands of 'fake' songs with nonsense names like "Zygophyshy" and "Calm Knuckles". By using a "low and slow" botnet strategy to stream these tracks 24/7, he siphoned over $10 million in royalties without a single human listener.

2. The Pro Rata Trap: Why was this so easy? We explain the fatal flaw in the Pro Rata payment model used by Spotify and Apple Music. Because all revenue goes into one giant pool, bot farms aren't just cheating the system—they are directly stealing money from legitimate subscribers and artists.

3. The Nuclear Option: The industry is fighting back, but innocent artists are getting caught in the crossfire. We analyze Spotify's controversial 1,000-stream minimum, which effectively demonetized 87% of all tracks on the platform to stop fraud. Is this necessary security, or a "Reverse Robin Hood" move that kills the indie underground?.