A Danish man has been found guilty of manipulating streams on digital music service providers by artificially generating plays across hundreds of songs.
It was alleged the suspect, an unnamed 53-year-old Danish male, made at least 2 Million Kroner from artificially generated plays in a “historic” case.
Prosecutors in the case claim that the streaming numbers to achieve that revenue could not have been generated by human users, stating that unauthorized techniques were likely to be used. In fact, the number of streams garnered the suspect with the title of becoming the highest-earning composer for streaming between 2014 and 2017.
On top of this, the suspect was also found guilty of breaching copyright on 37 of the songs, in which the Danish man was accused of taking works from other artists, manipulating them, and then publishing them under his own name.
The suspect was sentenced to one year and six months; three months must be served in prison, fined 200,000 Danish kroner, and had his profits of 2 Million Kroner confiscated.