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The AI Scam That’s Robbing Every Major Metal Band – Even the Legends!

Heavy Metal Philosophy | December 27, 2025



On episode 184 of Heavy Metal Philosophy, we expose the shocking world of AI scams that are targeting some of the biggest names in metal music! From iconic legends to rising stars, no band is safe from this digital deception.

I’ll explain how these scams operate, the tactics used by fraudsters, and the impact on the music industry. I’ll break down the mechanisms of how these high-tech heists work and suggest solutions.

Link to news story;
https://metalinjection.net/news/more-bands-hit-with-ai-generated-songs-on-streaming-services

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Metal Digest articles link;
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#ai #scammer #spotify

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Written by Heavy Metal Philosophy

Comments

This post currently has 50 comments.

  1. @Jon_Zaremba

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    I've no interest in gaining unearned wealth, but I think this sort of scamming will be positive for integral artists in the future. It illustrates how retarded this whole mechanism is and the absurdity of our currall together.

    The more often these things occur, the sooner true artists will reject the truly threatening scammers like Spotify themselves. Likewise, sincere audience members will do so as well.

    If it takes a generation or two, it's worth it. If the art of music becomes a forgotten endeavor for the rest of humanity, that's fine too.

    10,000 years from now, someone will discover the works of Laure Le Prunanec and marvel at her accomplishment much like we do the pyramids today, having no clue how humans birthed such feats into existence. We may just need to evolve out of music altogether.

  5. @theprogrammerrolandmc3039

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    Why not title the video Bot Farms because that's what it is the music industry uses them to take everything remember the money is spread thin from one big pot and the old bands have better deals higher pay from distribution streaming and they are laughing at bands that make no money. Example i done a experiment with dance music i had 25.000 streams and earned $4

  6. @erotesismusic9346

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    Dude I'm not even two minutes into this video and I've already had to suffer through three ads for A.I. related/dominated products just to get this far … 🤷‍♀️🙄🤖🔫

  8. @nwerd7584

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    The initial story is not a scam, its smart and its pulling power away from these platforms who benefit from knocking smaller services out of the water, Its called business and its ruthless. Big Ups to that guy., This is what you get when you abandon physical and this is what you get when you willingly centralize. The amount of people who choose spotify over other services warrant this behavior. I dont like spotify but im forced to use it all the time. Funnyily enough I use it less now as their censorship grows more and more while YT features all those albums spotify wont play.

  11. @Andybaby

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    7:40 I'm confused. What do you mean "uploaded under Earth Crisis's profile"? Can anyone make a "Led Zeppelin" profile, and have their songs come up under a search for "Led Zeppelin"? [disclaimer: I'm new to Spotify] [edit: ok i watched the whole video.. is the answer really 'yes'!?? Surely the BIG bands (who are being ripped off, and having their reps affected) have the $ and motivation to do something about this?]

  12. @theheavymetalhillbilly7152

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    It should be noted the guy in the first example got in trouble for bot farming not for making AI music and having it on Youtube and making money from it. Him making money from it was not illegal. Get ready folks…the music industry is watching this…today's fraud is tomorrow's business model.

  13. @mrmikemrmike

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    Honestly Dude… You don't know what's going on here and you have not read the Michael Smith indictment… FIRST in AMERICA – You are innocent until proven guilty… What Michael Smith did was basically High-Tech Bot Marketing in collaboration WITH other people and companies… On a side note, Streaming Services have been negligent in handling Royalty Pools – which is a questionable way of doing business in the first place… How does any artists know that Streaming Services are not scamming artists? No artist does… ROYALTY SCAMS ARE AS OLD AS RECORD LABELS… Back to the indictment… It's garbage… Carolina musician Michael Smith found a legal loophole AND NOW the FEDS from the Southern District of New York have charged him with wire fraud… So what's happening here. THE SDNY is trying to make law by Judicial Precedent side stepping Enacted Law (laws enacted by the people through Congress) while confiscating millions to pad their year end bonuses (forfeiture laws violate a hosts of Amendments and even now Lawyers are fighting in the courts around America proving these administrative actions are Unconstitutional) STOP BELIEVING EVERYTHING THE GOVERNMENT TELLS YOU… THAT ISN'T METAL! FUK THA BOZOS! LATER DUDE! PEACE OUT!

  15. @Pasture_Prime

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    the first video you talked about the music or whatever he generated is not the problem. he had fake users called farming playing his upload songs over and over as in not real people listening to it to get paid. I could have been farting sounds or a pod cast. he stole royalty money with the content. good or bad didn't matter as they were not real people listening to them.

  16. @foodwatermusic

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    Society runs in fraud…. Everyone is participating in fraud… Aka The Federal Reserve. The government just has the monopoly on fraud; only they're allowed under law to commit fraud.

  21. @jerrywemhoff

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    if you're an "idea man" you should start producing. Find a band that has talent but needs that extra little bit of something that's impossible to define. I do just fine doing exactly that. Fuck AI.

  22. @jerrywemhoff

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    Just don't use Spotify. No boycott, stop entirely. I've used Youtube music for almost 10 years and it is not only more intuitive but I know from my clients that they get paid more from Facebook, Youtube and Amazon than they do from Spotify.

  23. @jamesm.9434

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    I don't see how it's illegal to create accounts and listen to your own music to make money. He took advantage of the greed companies not the end user. If i don't listen to a song and pay 9$/mo Spotify doesn't give the money to the musicians I listened to the previous month, nor if I only listen to one song do they give most of that money to the artist, Good on this guy for taking the greedy companies money. record labels reduce the fee to license the artists music then invest into the streaming platform cutting the artists out of their royalties.

  25. @andypanda2515

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    Duly noted AI bad unless it's the band itself!….so you're saying that Karens are not metal screechers and that cockroach didn't do grindcore. Thx for heads up…and always remember Lars caught fire for us!
    (also rem it's a DA claiming all this and a legacy media that thinks the entire internet is out to steal THEIR money!)

  28. @kingrico7909

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    AI is just the worst in every way. Just wait and see😔😡
    Ey Barbas dont miss the new album by Kanonenfieber. Best blackened death of 2024, by far 👍👌👊😘

  29. @GoddaryuTUBE

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    If AI music is taking any noticeable amount of money from your music, then your music might just not be good. Cause AI music is low bitrate horribly composed and just overall bad. Without bots farming plays it becomes a non issue, I don't have an issue with someone using AI to create, if someone releasing AI music to make money off, they have to pay the AI companies for the right to use them commercially anyway, this is not fraud at all until bots are used for plays.
    Those same AI bots he got arrested for playing his music, the big labels are also using for plays to ensure on release day it hits the top.

    As for uploading to another artists profile, who cares? Get it taken down, the artist gets the revenue from it because just uploading a song isn't enough to get paid, if it gets uploaded to another bands account, the money goes to that bands account, not yours. Also it doesn't reflect badly on them at all cause it's quite easy to explain and not at all their fault.

    Using AI isn't cheating the system either. If I'm offering a product and you choose to enjoy it and use it and pay for it then I am providing something that someone wants. This is how society works.
    Do you know how many things in this world have become automated and destroyed entire lines of work in the past? Yeah, just because you make music doesn't make you any different to any other job, you aren't special.

  32. @stevendefino7485

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    Chilling when you reminded us that Spotify (as just one example) isn't harmed by this if they get their 30%. If we are indeed in a "Techno-Fuedalism" world, that concept is key. It is all theater to them.

  34. @howdoyousound

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    Just finished the mixes for a double album. As I vetted mastering engineers the first question I asked was "Do you use AI at any point in your process?" Chose one from the small pool of "No". There is no room for compromise in this.

  35. @redacted428

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    It's impossible for musicians to make a living from apps like Spotify as it is. They are parasitic entities that get rich off the musicians they prey upon and yet the state allows them to operate without any consequences for their predation whatsoever.

  36. @DebWrites

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    Similar happens in the book industry. Amazon has "limited" authors to uploading 3 books per day to slow it down. With subscription reading where authors get paid by pageviews, even a shitty first page can count as a pageview.

  38. @xstatic-ow5mz

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    When you say metal bands don't make any money are you being hyperbolic or just referring to underground bands that most people will never hear of? I mean it's no secret that some metal bands are pretty mainstream nowadays and are popular enough and sell enough records, concert tickets and merch to live a pretty luxurious lifestyle.

  39. @xstatic-ow5mz

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    You say fraud is not up for moral debate. I would agree with you. Interestingly though, the metal scene has it's fair share of atheistic, nihilistic, and hedonistic people. I would bet money those are mainly the ones arguing in favor of A.I. and in some cases using the advancement of science to justify their position.

  40. @elgatofelix8917

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    Small time scammers get arrested and jailed while the Federal Reserve keeps printing funny money and scamming the entire world population with fractional reserve banking since 1913

  41. @richiebricker

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    There can be No moral use of AI. It was born when some rich guys decided to steal every bit of ART in the world, and they did. They stole my music, your music and everyones music off of every laptop, desktop, server and cellphone, even servers that dont allow downloads. How could they hack everybodies pc and cellphone? Easy, they own the operating system on all of em and the servers that run Linux, they had to brute force thier way in. One guy that owns a small server business who was aware of what was going on, locked his server up with bots telling em you cant come in. So they hit his server 1 million times in a 24 hr period. Thats what Brute Force does, mind you, all the businesses couldnt do business that day as the server was being bombarded and he had to pay a bundle for all the extra band width which can be expensive. Facebooks upcoming AI is doing that right now. Zuckerberg said He doesnt care if people dont want him taking their art cause the $20 million fine he will receive is just the cost of doing business, like a tax. No its not like a tax, Its your Govt telling you Dont Do That `Is a crime!!! One of the biggest AI reviewers "Mike Wolfe" was showing stuff generated by a new AI with a 5 second video of stars moving across the sky making a bunch of half circle lines. It was called "The stars over Joshua Tree". That was my Time Lapse video I had made a year before and never posted it and never intended for anyone `to see. They didnt even change the name of the file that was stolen off my pc. Im sure Mike Wolfe edited it out of his video after I asked him too. But thats the weird shit youre gonna see more and more of. These are billions and billions of crimes. Some day they will have to send us all a small check for stealing our stuff. I will keep and take pics of it and it will be used as evidence that they admit to committing a crime against me. I might have ton fight them the rest of my life and only end up with a $30 check but I have to do the right thing. We all have to Fight The Good Fight. We cant all just be bad people stealing from each other, So come now children of the Beast, Be Strong and SHOUT AT THE DEVIL

  43. @brokenwithin38

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    Another scam that's been going on lately… Musicians beware!!! My band got a comment on a post on our FB page claiming we were in violation of intellectual property rights, but of course didn't say what that violation was. The scam assumes you will react out of panic, so it goes on to claim that, if you dont respond to contest at a website link, you will have your page and all it contains removed within 24 hours. If you respond, some entity somewhere gets full access to all your bands social media accounts (not just FB), and it's downhill from there.

  45. @FuriousMetal1968

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    Seriously! What a great fucking podcast Jon! I had no idea this was going on but it honestly doesn't surprise me! This may come across very cynical but the way society has become over the past decade or so it's no surprise that this is happening! I'm so passionate about Metal it pisses me off to no end that they're stealing from these artists! Sorry for the rant! I'm just glad you're trying to do something about it.

  47. @GhostHostIzzo

    December 27, 2025 at 6:32 pm

    I love that you name checked King Gizzard. They are my new favorite band! Have you listened to any of their 'metal' albums? They go pretty hard! They broke the mosh barrier at their last show. What are your thoughts on non-metal bands doing metal albums.

Comments are closed.

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