When I wanted to play music festivals, friend Sam Larkin wrote reviews of my playing as though it had appeared in newspapers important enough to have foreign correspondents and columns about relationship advice. I applied Letraset to the results, which was the pre-digital equivalent of AI, except it required tweezers and left glue on your thumb. This was bullshit, but artisanal bullshit, no algorithms were harmed. I once read Brian Epstein sent people into record stores to request Beatles records. The purpose was to create demand, or at least create demand for demand. Show business. You convince the public that the public is interested. The public, terrified of being left out, becomes interested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Michael Smith industrialized this tradition. He produced hundreds of thousands of AI songs, uploaded them under imaginary artist names then engaged thousands of fake accounts to stream them billions of times. The fake audience was extremely loyal. Never went to the bathroom or shouted \u201cFree Bird.\u201d He was paid more than $8 million in royalties. The government sentenced him to two years in prison and ordered him to return the money. The lesson is not that you must never manufacture enthusiasm. That would eliminate advertising, politics and ninety percent of the music business. The lesson is once your imaginary audience earns eight million dollars, it requires a lawyer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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