How Money Laundering W/ Spotify Works
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- čas přidán 5. 11. 2023
- A crazy symptom of a few much larger problems. (*reuploaded to be slightly more vague 😬)
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FYI: 90% of this could be solved by Spotify managing their own catalog and payments instead of depending on for-profit, 3rd party aggregators like Distrokid (and hundreds of lesser knowns) to do it for them.
You should put a trigger warning for Danish viewers: far too much positive said about Sweden already in the first 2 minutes!
thats dumb as fuck
Well they own shares of Distrokid so they are profitting on this both ways so they clearly have no interests in doing so I guess LOL...
10 years ago or so I sent a text to my Nephew that a streaming service just played me one of his songs (I didn't ask it to) and his response was something along the lines of "Great! Now I can buy 1/13000th of a sandwich!" ... He made 6 albums, multiple world tours ... and he was broke. On the bright side he knew he would get screwed so he also worked on his other passion and is now a history professor.
I remember when I read Steve Albini's essay 30 years ago called "The Problem With Music" on the music industry and the nasty little secrets it holds. It doesn't surprise me that they are creating new nasty little secrets still.
Australian Casinos are also good for laundering money, but not so good you make a profit.
I'm a little confused why that would help - aren't all of the streams already "legitimate" as far as Spotify can tell? As long as organized crime is using real artists, it doesn't matter how good their music is (or isn't) because Spotify can't detect those streams as being bad
As a swede I thank you for shining light on this madness
It's too bad the Soross funded elites wanted to shit on your country with all those refugees. Apparently letting the migrants into your home and feeding them didn't make them want to stop committing crimes against you.
Yeah Benn's a real one
Another swede here agreeing heartily.
@@Cheeses_K_Riced It's the way our species works *under capitalism. To truly change things, we need to end (and replace) the system
I remember going to a seminar in Stockholm back in 2017 with a label rep giving advice to new producers: only focus on rap with young male talents with criminal background. Target audience: young urban girls with Spotify free subscriptions. They stream that shit 24/7.
The news here never bring up the white collar crime aspects. They only focus on the violence.
The music industry has always rubbed shoulders with organized crime.
Before Spotify, party promotion was the way to go.
I think organized crime is so prevalent that it rubs shoulders with ALL legitimate industries and institutions
Yup, and nightlife/clubbing is ridden with organized crime as well. Security extortion, drug trafficking and dealing at venues, the whole nine yards - a bunch of lovely, wholesome folks all around you
Fun fact: The scene in The Godfather where Michael Corleone casually talks about how Vito came to manage Johnny Fontaine, actually happened irl with Ol’ Blue Eyes Frank Sinatra
not to mention, where do you think the money for those ""advances"" (loans) comes from with some of these shadier record companies? why do you think artists end up mysteriously/tragically dying when their contract is expiring and they havent met expectations?
the whole art industry is rigged and is corrupted with organized crime even in italy
When a crime happens in Sweden, many swedes go to the discussion board Flashback to find out more. It's often some "aspiring rapper" who got shot. Most of the time everyone says "Literally Who?". And every time som lowlife answers "Hey gramps, you know nothing of modern culture, the victim has 2 million streams a month on Spotify". Now we know why.
It doesn't end there. Every year the state controlled radio channel P3 has an award event where artists gets awards, mostly based on the Spotify numbers.
Dang, so it's not just subscribers paying criminals to launder money, it's advertisers and Spotify's own investors. Absolutely insane.
100% nailed it.
It's a big old circle.
Our entire economy is some sort of con job, hustle and/or rip off
where did you get this from?
@varesso7568 So, I'm basing that off the section of the video starting at 8:45 and Benn's previous video on the topic. The gist is: at the current rate per stream that Spotify commits to, their income from subscriptions and advertisements isn't enough. The only other funds they have to put towards paying out is the venture capital received from investors. From that we can say, in aggregate, the money being ultimately transferred to these criminals comes from subscribers, advertisers, and investors. This is particularly interesting because, from what we've frequently seen with other big tech companies, fundamental changes are more likely to occur when the advertisers and investors start to become upset. On the flip side, those same fundamental changes are less likely if just the end-user, subscribers, or content originators are affected (not always the case, but it often is). Hope that helps!
@@varesso75688:55 where he talks about his other video discussing Spotify’s fails
“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.”
― Hunter S. Thompson
Thank you for shining a light on this issue! There is something else about this issue that is important for Swedes who care about music and culture: There are music charts that are based on Spotify plays, which makes this a self-feeding monster.
1. Buy Spotify plays
2. Artists with millions of bought plays will enter these charts
3. Since these artists are now on charts, they must be popular, right? Swedish radio starts playing them, because FOMO - if they are this big on Spotify, how have we missed them!??
4. Same artists become legitimately popular, since they get a lot of radio plays, mentioned on TV, other channels, etc.
5. More Spotify plays!
Lots of these artists have then gone on to win prestigious awards, even though we don't really know how many of them were popular in their own right.
This is not money laundering and it was an issue from the beginning, when charts were introduced on radio. Back in the vinyl times. Labels have been known to buyb their own records to simulate popularity
They still do it to this day, same with books
And don't forget that a lot of the lyrics encourage crime, and when played on the mainstream ends up inspiring impressionable youth who think gangs are cool...
It's like Payola 2.0.
Are you describing Ice Spice? 😂
It goes to show how rarely I see paper and coin cash here in Sweden, that it took me some time to realize that the bank notes on screen are Norwegian, not Swedish. :)
Its the old norwegian bank notes too
Yeah I noticed instantly that they were wrong, but hey, it's the message that counts
so you CAN make money on spotify 😮who knew
Instructions unclear; I won a Grammy.
You now can be called "Fly Weight".
So many times some sketchy local artist has told me their album got streamed a bajillion times in Sweden.
Now I know why.
This needs to be a whole series. How to launder money in the music industry in every country. This is the kind of investigative journalism we need.
"How much of your money is going to a con artist?"
Well considering Spotify gives away most of their royalties to the big 4 labels, I'd say about 90% of it.
Thank you for actually calling these tactics fraud in your opening statement. There have been a handful of business bro podcasters bringing people on their shows to BRAG about committing literal fraud on Spotify. Some guy was claiming he makes $70,000 a month with bot plays across hundreds of artist accounts to avoid detection. WE NEED TO LITERALLY SEND PEOPLE LIKE THIS TO PRISON. Holy hell
As long as investment capital keeps subsidizing bad business then the bad business will continue. Disney sunk $400M into Vice Media all for naught, for example (and did this after other investors had also done similar).
I watched that exact same podcast with that guy. He was an absolute bafoon and was also in jail for 2 year prior to that interview for wire fraud. It's never a worthwhile long-term strategy.
@@CrystalMath_ yea I went and looked him up and found the court case where he stole like $4 million from his employer to pay for music gear (what a fucking loser). Goes to prison, then gets out AND STARTS BRAGGING ABOUT MORE FRAUD. What in the fuck is going on in this industry???!?
We should be shunning people like that and anyone who works with them should lose all support/followers. We can't let shitheads like that dude and others keep controlling the music industry if we ever expect to have any amount of equality or justice for musicians.
Thank you Benn, it's a bit depressing to see how digital culture is really making harder for musicians and artist.
Welcome to humanity
Especially when it was supposed to make it easier…relatively speaking.
internet utopians didn't see that one coming did they
after 30 years we can come to the conclusion that digital was a mistake
the move from lp to cd and portastudio to usb interfaces wasnt worth the massive societal changes
short of academia/medecine, Ive yet to see an upside/progress
Before the digital age it was even worse?? Nothing really changed everything just got easier 🤷
You will be happy to see the solution presented in the PDF on unbounded capitals website
Great video. This phenomenon isn't exclusive to Sweden btw, a lot of German and Swiss rappers use botted stream to make it to the top of the charts and knowing their ties to organized crime we can make an educated guess where the money to buy the botted streams is coming from...
Super interesting videos thank you for bringing this out to light, it sucks that small artists are getting screwed up by their peers too on top of corporations and greedy labels.
I've been looking for an alternative to Spotify for a while now and got recommended on of your videos. I'd love to hear your in depth toughts on how streaming services are ruining how we discover and listen to music. Keep up all the good things you are doing to help artists out, music needs more people like you around
What's your take on Spotify not paying out on a track unless it has 1000 annual plays? I'd be hit, but I'm not in it for the money and I think I'm pretty rare.
They don't pay out on a track until it makes $.30 to $.50 .. thats 30 to 50 cents.. a much lower minimum than most institutions and companies will bother with.
Benn I honestly love you for these videos. You bring some of the most interesting and unusual content on this platform. I wish I had found your channel sooner.
Great research and presentation, Benn. Thanks for shining a light on this
I did not expect you to cover this topic. This was big news in Sweden not long ago.
The real reason Sweden got more violent is because they heard I will be moving from America to Sweden in a few years and they wanted me to feel more at home. I am thankful for Sweden being so kind to my feelings.
Man, moving from a 4th world country to a 3rd world country. You must love pain. Why don't you move to a nice place?
my music has been added onto botted playlists for unknown reasons and i'm always worried when it happens. i've never paid to be on a playlist and i always try to reach out and get it removed when it notice it. maybe it's part of trying to make the playlist seem legit?
Spotify always making the most ethical decisions!
Stole this joke from a friend, but it fits. Given their CEO invests in "defense" companies
Yeah I support LGBT:
Lockheed Martin
General Dynamics
Boeing
The Raytheon Technologies Corporation
Right about now The Hells Angels, The Commisso “Family” (who are “allegedly” part of the Ndrangheta) and Los Zetas Cartel are looking more ethical than Spotify, at least the three mentioned are upfront about what they do.
In Australia, up until recently, money laundering was done mostly in Casinos and local clubs where they had gambling machines (pokies).
A lot of the companies making pokies are now into making gacha games like Raid: Shadow Legends - the returns are way better, because online games can be pushed onto minors, and because unlike pokies, there's not a legally-mandated return to the gambler for online games.
New South Wales's premier sure knew a thing or two about (profiting off of and aiding) it
Laundering money on casinos was (and to a point might still be) one of the oldest and easiest tricks in the book all across the world.
yeah that's been a main staple of the crime world, from Japan to Murica, casino's are ridiculously easy to launder money in
Which part of aus you at? I’m Melbourne
Outstanding work as usual, Benn 👏🏼
Excellent reporting on this. This is small news compared to money laundering but I've noticed fake albums on Spotify as well. I'm not sure how prevalent this is but I've seen old reddit posts of jazz fans complaining about it when they're trying to search past artists like Herb Ellis, Barney Kessel, Johnny Smith.
I've encountered it looking up Gary Numan and Tubeway Army. The band Dramatis' album "For Future Reference" from 1981 has been recycled into 5 newer albums with nearly identical track listings, but shittier album art.
There's 2 fake Dramatis albums: 2009's "The Dramatis Project" and 2012's "This is... Dramatis". There's the fake 2012 Tubeway Army albums "Ex Luna Scientia", 2016's "I Only Rewind", and the fake Gary Numan album from 2016 "Terrestial Channels".
So random that a bunch of it is Gary Numan!
Those are not fake, they are being released by whoever owns the royalty to the songs. If it is the artist themselves its them that's re-releasing it to Spotify that way...
I just had to chuckle when I read your video title, that's genius 😂
You have a brand new subscriber
Speaking of pirating digital content, the Pirate Bay was founded by Swedes 😅 I love Swedes and have a few Swedish friends ❤
Swedish programmer and μTorrent creator, Ludvig Strigeus, is one of the brains behind Spotify. It's basically p2p torrent tech.
Which came about from some of the founders being in Sweden's Pirate Party
Which is honestly, so unironically based. Intellectual property law has become
nothing but a corporate golem, but nothing exemplifies that better than Disney's lobbying
@@RadikAlice The Pirate Bay was founded 3 years before the (political) Pirate Party was, fyi.
I’m a software engineer who works in the stream royalties collections and writes software to fight streaming fraud. It’s awful.
Do Android Streams Electronically Thieve? (shitty Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? joke lol)
Explain to me why it’s so easy to bot
@@metalxmetalxmetalxmetalx you tell us haha. You're the one with over 60,000 subscribers on less than 500 total channel views 😆
@@metalxmetalxmetalxmetalx no its really simple the engineers tasked with solving the fraud get paid less than the engineers doing the fraud it's really no ones fault but spotify
@@kirkydaturkey nice try bro. U seem mad salty I’ve had this CZcams since 2013 and I used to be a successful CZcamsr.
Always interesting when you are digging into the inner works of how streaming platforms work!
Absolutely fabulous and brilliant video, Thank you Benn!!!!!
Thank you for your videos Benn, amazing content
Thanks for shining a light on this. Musicians may not be the only ones hurt by this (since the royalty pool is diverted to scammers): presumably, these click farms use free Spotify accounts - if that's the case, then advertisers are paying to show ads to bots
@@Joe-sg9ll ads help fund the videos you watch on this platform and free music on Spotify. Screwing over advertisers hurts the creators you like to watch/listen to
Really, really, nice video, Benn. Subscribed. Keep them coming!
As usual, great video Benn. If I could request a topic for a future video; as a long time bedroom producer who get pleasantly surprised when I get over 100 streams on a song, what kind of options for promotion and exposure are there for people like me? Completely independent, trying my best to do in house mixing mastering and artwork etc, only thing that I can't just DIY are more ears on my work
For me, it re-inforces the sense I've had that entities that hard broadcast paid advertisements on CZcams likely have a shady aspect. Distrokid, VPNs etc ... a topic you discussed a while back.
You think ?
Absolutely wild. And a phenomenal telling of the story/what’s going on.
Thank you for the excellent meaningful thoughtful content as always.
The older I get, the more i realize how very very few legitimate ways people make real (good) money in this world outside of working for corporations... and those corporations are likely doing the shady stuff for you
True, unfortunately
Great video. The more I watch you, the more I respect you.
If only someone could tell what exactly happened to sweden in those last 10 years… hmmm … I just can’t put my finger on it what that might have been…
Ok. Benefit #8 pushed me over the edge of deciding what next patreon to join ^^. ❤
You allowed me to laugh substantially instead of simply being depressed. Thanks.
As an up-and-coming fraudster new to the space but full of drive and love for the game, I’m glad to have discovered this video before 100k views.
Shoutout to the youtube algo coming in clutch and Benn for the insightful content.
There was a real strange ad with some dude in Camo behind a shitty “interlaced” effect advertising some documentary he made about something big coming. Might be worth your next deep dive.
I saw this video reposted on tik tok, with no credit. But im glad i found the original video.
Love from sweden 🇸🇪
Excellent video, thanks Benn
how does this tie in to the recent reporting that spotify is thinking of changing payouts to quash various types of content they feel is not "legit" enough to receive a payout?
Another amazing Benn video. 😍
Great work Ben!
Such a fascinating combination of music, technology, and crime!
benn never fails to give us side hustle ideas 🗣️‼️
Not using Swedish bills for representing our money was a nice touch, mr. American! 😂
Hahahha. I was about to mention the use of the neighbour's currency in some parts. Still wondering if it was intentional, though.
Oh yeah gotta sit down for this video
great video as always, thanks!
Great video, thanks Benn
Another great deep dive, thanks
Very interesting! The first I've heard about this! Great videos!
Interesting, does that mean this schema could be done in all services that are similar e.g. youtube..impressions and ad clicks, google ad etc
thx for the education
This video goes so fn hard. Thanks Benn!
The most interesting and surprising video report i've seen on youtube in a long time!
Interesting video. Thanks Benn .
before spotify, i knew a person that did structuring payment laundering for very rich people using itunes. it worked well back then because the purchase prices were much larger than stream payments... i seriously doubt it's possible now, this was back in like 2010-2012.
this person ended up getting caught for at least some of these transactions, do not do this.
Signed up for the chunk. Don't you let me down Ben, you beautiful entity you!
One chunk of DMT hahaha I see you. Culture jamming at it's finest 😍
Help me understand 😅😂
@@xii226a Benn's patreon perks promise one chunk of DMT. DMT is an illegal hallucinogenic substance. Using standardized advertising formats to make protest statements against [capitalism/drug laws/etc.] is called culture jamming.
I thought that was a nice option.
@@xii226a watch the last segment again real closely, specifically the Patreon perks 😉 there's a few items in the list towards the bottom that were hilariously just kinda quietly included ironically, that the typical Patreon creator wouldn't dare. Either that or I am owed some DMT I wasn't aware of 😂
Yet another reason to use an ad blocker
Hey Benn, what's the first song that you're playing in the video? Loving that choon!
I'm so happy to have had a chance to watch this video before the YT Overlords flag it for whatever keywords they deem inappropriate at the time
Thank you for digging into this. I hope it gives Daniel Ek something to think about.
That implies he has a conscience
@@RadikAlice and ethics
@@sawtooth808 Kinda goes without saying, but yes
Yo this is pretty wild lol! Great video!
Great work Benn
I have found this information most valuable Mister Jordan, most valuable.
Benn's on fire! 🔥
Came for the sensational headline, stayed for the dark humor
Talk about a descent into madness, holy crap!! 🤯
thanks for the tut! :)
"Swedes" lol
Just lol
I saw the sweet modular setup, then looked at your chsnnel, then was ready to listen to you 😂
Any decent accountant can make your ill gotten gains "look" legal for the gubment, it ain't that difficult, that's why most of our politicians aren't in prison when they take massive amounts of dark money from superPAC. You place WAY too much credit on the IRS who will ignore your gains as long as an accountant makes them look mostly legal, IRS don't have time or energy to comb thru every punters finances.
Hey. It still works on CZcams too. There are several "musicians" from the Dominican Republic involved into it. They admit it publicly and only 2 of them got their channels banned. In one specific case more than 90% of the video views seem to come from bots. 30 milllion views per month.
and I thought sucking at music was the worst thing...I'm kinda glad my music sucks now, Benn you're better than ambien, ty.
ok now I know my brain is actually slow (also watching this at 6am is not helping), since I didn't fully grasp how this thing actually works I think :( but still, a great video Benn, as always! :)
E: I think I get it a little bit more now, even after initial watch this thing seemed batshit crazy tho, also it's sad what happened to this swedish artist
The only channel worth viewing. Love this analysis
What are the options for shipping the chunk of DMT to New Zealand?
Asking for a friend.
Sorry to hear about your music. Best of luck to you
One of my favourite music people
I did it the old fashioned way: built a brand and worked hard. I'm over 100k streams a week and proud from a fully organic campaign (i.e no ads or boosts)
This is insane wtf insane . I can’t believe I have never heard of this .
I've had two houses blown up within one mile away from my house in the past year lol. It's crazy what prohibition can do to a nation.
Yeah Sweden is way too anti drug.
a german public broadcaster did an uncover thing a few years ago where the reporter (with no musiccal history) made a hip-hop track with the help of a good producer, released it and got it to chart by buying listens from a hacker. The thesis of the report according to the anonymous respondents they dug up, the artists probably don't know their success is down (at least partly) to money laundering.
czcams.com/video/qiqYuSQwkHo/video.htmlsi=A81PuSxC2IlugFaJ
8:14 What do you mean with this? Can you give an example
Super interesting. Thanks
this was great!
Interesting! This reminds me of the "Black Mafia Family" from Detroit, where they were laundering money through rap concerts
Don't forget the educational purposes disclaimer
This video was soo good!! ❤🎉
Nice thumbnail, Can't wait to see how they do this.
"Gets to meet robbers" 😂
Benn, at 4:38 that's Norwegian notes, not Swedish : )