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An odd discovery on Spotify

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Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#261

Post by noitpmeder »

lizardactivist wrote: post #236
usednet wrote: post #28

People have been noticing this a lot recently but what nobody seems to know is that this is a form of money laundering/“scamming.” I know because I used to be active on crime forums and talked to some of the people who engineered this scheme. People will set up fake Spotify artist accounts with stolen identities and bank accounts, pay a musician for songs that pass as music, and then bot millions of streams on them.…

How do the scammers get the money if they use someone else's (stolen) identity and bank account? Also, how do they succeed in keeping this scheme for more than a few days after the identity theft is noticed and reported to the police? And why would they not just take the very music they just bought and paid for, and publish that as any other artist do? There's no crime in buying the rights from another artist -- that…

My take was that it's about getting _some_ of the dirty money out. So the dirty cash they are spending to fund this campaign is returning some % worth of Spotify commission. Even better if it somehow hooks the algorithm to recommend it to non-botted accounts.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#262

Post by type0 »

nkozyra wrote: post #253
merijnv wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Happens to me a lot on Youtube too - you watch just one thing - and now your recommendations are full of things like that one thing. Spotify's recommendation system is much better than youtube's (at least for me). I frequently "joke" that it is one of the few applications of ML that actively make my life as a consumer better. Having been following Spotify's "Discover Weekly" for several years now, I'm actually real…

> Spotify's recommendation system is much better than youtube's (at least for me). I frequently "joke" that it is one of the few applications of ML that actively make my life as a consumer better. I hear this all the time but Spotify just plays stuff I've listened to. It's not a discovery service for me, it just plays the hits. I'm wondering if that's just what it is and everyone likes it because it's playing stuff t…

> It's not a discovery service for me

Last.fm used to be good discovery service until it went downhill years ago, there should be services willing to take that niche

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#263

Post by kingofpandora »

Ragnarokk wrote: post #182
kingofpandora wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm probably missing something but how is this money laundering?

(In my opinion) Some hacker provides a paid service in which you have either hacked spotify accounts or well generated fakes that can run streams on fake artists accounts. Some random mafia pays these hackers to maintain their bots and to launder their money. You can even pay the hackers with the finally laundered money.

Now the hacker has to launder the money somehow. Fine, it's much less money, but still it doesn't feel like laundering rather than just straight up scamming.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#264

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

jiggawatts wrote: post #200
nosianu wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really interesting - although when I read that story I thought the point was the broken recommendation system. Happens to me a lot on Youtube too - you watch just one thing - and now your recommendations are full of things like that one thing . Or Facebook/Youtube, somehow: I watched a single video on Youtube about Viking sword fighting and suddenly my people recommendations on Facebook were at least 20% milit…

Something I noticed after I watched an episode of Stoic Finance[1] about a possible "impending crash of the Chinese economy" is that YouTube started recommending about a dozen "independent" channels. I put the word independent in air quotes because they all have near-identical looking title cards with the similar fonts, some variant of the phrasing "The collapse has begun!", and the same-ish content. Different presen…

The average Chinese person needs to save 100% of after-tax income for >30 years to have the down-payment for the average Chinese house. And, then, the interest payment alone would still be higher than the person's after-tax income.

Either China has to indefinitely grow at 10%+ per year (it's becoming obvious that's not going to happen), or the Yuan or Chinese home prices (~50% of Chinese wealth) are massively overvalued.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#265

Post by webmobdev »

coldtea wrote: post #174
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ok so the problem for the money launderer is that as spotify gets better at detecting bots and spam accounts they will have to pay increasing amounts of dirty money to get out clean money, at what point does it become a losing proposition to them, that is to say when this form of money laundering is less efficient than older forms?

A bigger problem would be that Spotify pays very little. And to have the bot "listen" to a song (to be eligible for payment) takes minutes of streaming, which turns to tons of time and a big bandwidth bill, since they'll need to do thousands of them in parallel...

This is where malware run bots come into picture ... it solves a lot of problem like not having to pay for bandwidth, evading detection by distributing access to the songs among varied IP and geography, etc.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#266

Post by ChildOfChaos »

chewz wrote: post #184
midasz wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a father of a young child, Spotify's algo's are completely useless to me. If their ML is so smart it should be able to determine that Row row row your boat doesn't mix well with Anthrax. Wish I'd be able to toggle 'don't recommend kids music' somewhere.

Both Spotify and Apple Music algos have no idea about music mood vs time of the day vs activity. Like late evening before sleep being perhaps not a good moment for heavy metal. And running not a right time for slow classical music. Which is weird in case of Apple Music because Apple knows exactly if I am sleeping, running or driving a car - just from reading my watch.

Isn't that more just you thing though?

Why isn't late evening before sleep good for heavy metal? I listen to the same music I listen to all day before sleep if I had music on.

The music I listen too doesn't change no matter where I am or the time of the day.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#267

Post by mekkkkkk »

alkonaut wrote: post #151

This is the TikTok-ification of music. The required response is the same here, as it is to the consumption of any other media, which is the same as when ordering food. Don't order food out of a random dark kitchen. Order from a brick and mortar restaurant you know . Don't use algorithmic feeds to discover video. Find a channel/producer you like and watch that. The same applies to music. Assume everything fed to you i…

Yes, you are part of the problem. But you are also a victim to the problem. You can only expect so much individual resistance against conveniences that are being launched into your brain by massive industries. Succumbing to these conveniences is highly understandable.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#268

Post by wartijn_ »

probably_wrong wrote: post #246
AlecSchueler wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can be helpful to turn off watch history during such sessions, or to remove the videos from your history afterwards. Agreed that there should be an automated solution, but you can avoid it today will a small amount of work.

Are we talking about the same Spotify? Because the only reference I found to removing songs from my recommendations is a thread from 2020 that says it is not possible. https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/How-do-I-delete-my...

You can start a private session next time you have a birthday party, to prevent even more birthday songs being recommended.

https://community.spotify.com/t5/FAQs/What-is-Private-Sessio...

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#269

Post by grkvlt »

mgdlbp wrote: post #75
20after4 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I listened to that comment thread as well and it is very similar to the playlist, only with slight variations. Imagine finding hundreds of threads where the colors are all the same, but with very small changes in the pattern as they are all woven into a blanket.

I listened to the users also and it's nearly the same comment with minor variations. Imagine finding dozens of threads where the jokes are all the same, but with very unsubstantive changes in phrasing as the site is turning into Reddit.

just like colossal cave [0]

    YOU ARE IN A MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL DIFFERENT.
    YOU ARE IN A LITTLE MAZE OF TWISTING PASSAGES, ALL DIFFERENT.
i remember getting lost in that maze, and didn't realise that the subtle change in wording for the room description was the trick to identifying them, so i dropped objects to help me make a map - which is what you are supposed to do in the other maze

    YOU ARE IN A MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE.
0. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure lists all the different descriptions

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#270

Post by pnt12 »

mgdlbp wrote: post #75
20after4 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I listened to that comment thread as well and it is very similar to the playlist, only with slight variations. Imagine finding hundreds of threads where the colors are all the same, but with very small changes in the pattern as they are all woven into a blanket.

I listened to the users also and it's nearly the same comment with minor variations. Imagine finding dozens of threads where the jokes are all the same, but with very unsubstantive changes in phrasing as the site is turning into Reddit.

I listened to mgdlbp also and it's nearly the same comment with minor variations. Imagine finding dozens of posts where the rants are all the same, but with very unsubstantive reasons in phrasing, as the old userbase complains about the new userbase ad nauseam.
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