https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/05/swedish-criminal-gangs-using-fake-spotify-streams-to-launder-money
Investigation claims networks convert illicit cash to bitcoin to pay people who sell false streams on the platform
Spotify is known for paying low for artists per listened song. So there are like millions of gangsters having Spotify running 24/7 to make their favorite artist earning their daily bread.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Criminal gangs behind a rise in bombings and shootings in Sweden in recent years are using fake Spotify streams to launder money, a Swedish newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Criminal networks have for several years been using money from drug deals, robberies, fraud and contract killings to pay for false Spotify streams of songs published by artists with ties to the gangs, an investigative report in Svenska Dagbladet claimed.
He said his gang began using Spotify for money laundering in 2019, around the time Swedish gangster rap became popular in the country and started winning music awards.
Describing the process, he said the gangs would convert their dirty cash to bitcoin, then used the cryptocurrency to pay people who sold fake streams on Spotify, which is a Swedish company.
The anonymous investigative police officer told Svenska Dagbladet he contacted Spotify in 2021 to discuss the matter but the company never returned his call.
The Swedish company said it was not aware of any contact made by law enforcement, nor had it found “any data or hard evidence that indicates that the platform is being used at scale in the fashion described”.
The original article contains 426 words, the summary contains 190 words. Saved 55%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Because Bitcoin is really really traceable and doesn't hold a stable value and is not widely accepted. So real currency is better and if you show a legitimate source then it is even better again.
Bitcoin is traceable. It's even more transparent than a bank account. Everyone can see how much money "you" have and where you spend it.
Because then you can show the government the paper trail back to Spotify showing that the money came from "legitimate sources of income"
The government isnt stupid, someone getting paid in bitcoin isnt doing nothing for it.
And then what? How do you then buy a house or a car with Bitcoin without alerting the authorities? Tax man will knock on the door and ask how you’ve obtained those bitcoins and ask why you didn’t report and pay taxes over those Bitcoin.
And bitcoin aren’t even truly anonymous.
You want a legitimate source of income. If the bitcoins were obtained illegally or through illegal activities, you are fucked as soon as you try to cash out.
Even if you somehow manage to cash out and not get caught at that point, having large amounts of disposable cash with no legitimate source of income would also trigger some alarm bells.
Never forget that Al Capone went to jail for tax evasion, not all the other shit he did.
I mean, if you're already criminal element, have no scruples and you have some resources to work with, why not cut out the middleman and develop your own botnet for generating fake Spotify listens?
4-5 years ago Steam had the same issue with their market place. Selling and buying skins for CS:GO and others.
Lol reminds me of Vulfpeck running a silent album and getting fans to listen to it. They raised about $10k and used it to fund a European tour.
I'm surprised John Cage didn't sue over it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3
I’ve been getting a lot of ads on instagram for Spotify playlists. I wonder if that has anything to do with it, because how else would you make money from a playlist of all things?
Spotify pays artists based on how many listens their songs get, so if you can get a bunch of bots to stream your music over and over you can get a legitimate income stream.
In this case, they’re using their illegal income to pay people to use a botnet to stream their songs - which then means they have a nice legal income instead.
Interestingly enough there seem to be two types of playlists that get pushed in ads. One is a normal one with a big variety of artists. That seems the least profitable to me. The other only has songs by one “artist” that seems to only have remixes of popular songs. That’s the sketchy one, in my opinion.