Hacker Spoofs Track Plays To Top Music Charts

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Hacker Spoofs Track Plays To Top Music Charts

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @09:30PM from the what-is-that-noise dept.

mask.of.sanity writes "Stand aside P!nk, Niki Minaj; you've just been beaten by a music generator. One Aussie security expert curious about the fraud mechanisms at play on streaming services like Spotify uploaded garbage music tracks and directed three Amazon virtual machines to click the play button 24/7 for a month, earning him top spot in online music charts and $1000 in royalties."

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Beaten by a music generator? by Sockatume · 2013-10-30 21:39 · Score: 5, Insightful

I thought that's where the tunes came from in the first place.

--
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
1. Re:Beaten by a music generator? by spokenoise · 2013-10-30 21:51 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Yep, all your tunes are belong to us!
2. Re:Beaten by a music generator? by 91degrees · 2013-10-30 22:00 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Hi grandpa. I think what you meant to say was "It's just noise! It all sounds the same and I can't understand the lyrics. And get of my damn lawn!"
3. Re:Beaten by a music generator? by They'reComingToTakeM · 2013-10-30 22:32 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  His name is spelt "Simon Cowell". It's just pronounced ARSE.
4. Re:Beaten by a music generator? by Thanshin · 2013-10-30 22:33 · Score: 2
  
  In all seriousness, aren't most pop songs written by committee* before the performer gets involved?
  Would you prefer the committee to sing their own songs or the average singer composing their own songs?
  I don't see much advantage in having the composer and the singer being the same person. I care about the final product.
5. Re:Beaten by a music generator? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-30 22:52 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Yeah me too, but I also like a bit of a variety. It's the same goddamn committee that writes everything, hence everythings sounds the same.
6. Re:Beaten by a music generator? by fostware · 2013-10-30 22:56 · Score: 2
  
  Dammit! No Funny mod points to give :(
  
  --
  "We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over." - Aneurin Bevan
7. Re:Beaten by a music generator? by Sockatume · 2013-10-30 22:56 · Score: 2
  
  Jim Steinman wrote Meatloaf's best work, but Jim Steinman wasn't twelve people.
  
  --
  No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
8. Re:Beaten by a music generator? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-30 23:11 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Jim Steinman wrote Meatloaf's best work, but Jim Steinman wasn't twelve people.
  Proof that you're wrong:
  * "Jim Steinman" is twelve characters.
  * Most people in the music industry could be described as "characters".
  * Therefore "Jim Steinman" is twelve people in the music industry.
9. Re:Beaten by a music generator? by Hognoxious · 2013-10-30 23:32 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Would you prefer the committee to sing their own songs or the average singer composing their own songs?
  
  I'd prefer them to all fall off a cliff.
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
10. Re:Beaten by a music generator? by realityimpaired · 2013-10-31 00:01 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Would you prefer the committee to sing their own songs or the average singer composing their own songs?
  I don't see much advantage in having the composer and the singer being the same person. I care about the final product.
  Since the advent of autotune, most pop acts are not chosen for their ability to sing, they're chosen for their ability to look pretty. There aren't a lot of singer/songwriters in *that* genre, but once you get out of it, you'll find the majority of the *really* good stuff is performed by the same person or people who wrote it: performances are more visceral when the performer has an emotional connection with what they're playing.
  So you can have your fake plastic people performing fake plastic songs. Personally, I'll avoid the pop music genre, and stick with artists who actually deserve the name.
11. Re:Beaten by a music generator? by jones_supa · 2013-10-31 00:35 · Score: 2
  
  So you can have your fake plastic people performing fake plastic songs.
  There are occasionally some really good songs in the plastic everyday trash pop genre too. It might not be good art, but it might be good entertainment. You don't always need the steak with potatoes and salad but just the bag of candy (what an analogy...).
  My rules are only: do anything that you want, but stop this stupid overproducing of albums. Don't record 128 tracks in the DAW just because you can and then apply the kind of dynamic range compression of which only purpose is to fill the audio signal with energy so that it plays loud.
12. Re:Beaten by a music generator? by mrclisdue · 2013-10-31 01:14 · Score: 2
  
  ...but Jim Steinman wasn't twelve people.
  No, but he certainly didn't miss too many meals!
  cheers,
13. Re:Beaten by a music generator? by oobayly · 2013-10-31 01:45 · Score: 2
  
  So you can have your fake plastic people performing fake plastic songs.
  Nothing wrong with fake plastic trees though.
14. Re:Beaten by a music generator? by Kozz · 2013-10-31 02:35 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Jim Steinman wrote Meatloaf's best work, but Jim Steinman wasn't twelve people.
  Proof that you're wrong:
  * "Jim Steinman" is twelve characters.
  * Most people in the music industry could be described as "characters".
  * Therefore "Jim Steinman" is twelve people in the music industry.
  I thought the first impossible phrase that jumped out at me was "Meatloaf's best work".
  
  --
  I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
15. Re:Beaten by a music generator? by bluefoxlucid · 2013-10-31 02:55 · Score: 2
  
  Except that all the really good music was written by the bands. Queen wrote their own shit. ZZ Top. Aerosmith. Scorpions (I don't like Scorpions personally, but yeah... okay, they're good). Sonata Arctica. Iron Maiden. Johann Sebastian Bach. Greenday. Lard.
  Compare that to, uh. Bieber. Or Beyonce.
  
  --
  Support my political activism on Patreon.
16. Re:Beaten by a music generator? by Hognoxious · 2013-10-31 08:00 · Score: 2
  
  * YOU are not required to listen to music you don't like.
  
  I go in shops. I travel by public transport. So yes I am.
  
  * There are MANY people who *DO* like the music you don't like.
  
  One, argumentum ad populum.
  Two, I'm quite aware of them. They're usually in the same subway car as me, apparently with their headphones inside out.
  So yes, again, I fucking am required to listen to it, you fat nonce.
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
17. Re:Beaten by a music generator? by Nyder · 2013-10-31 11:18 · Score: 2
  
  And here is how King & Goffin are typical music industry assholes, taken from the wiki:
  
  Another bit of the conventional lore is that she had received only $50 for "The Loco-Motion." However, although she never owned the rights to her recordings, it seems $50 was actually her weekly salary during the years she was making records (an increase of $15 from what Goffin and King had been paying her as nanny). In 1971, she moved to South Carolina and lived in obscurity on menial jobs and welfare, until being rediscovered in 1987.[3] She died of cervical cancer in 2003.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Loco-Motion
  Like I said, great argument to support your side.
  
  --
  Be seeing you...
OMG by Big+Hairy+Ian · 2013-10-30 22:10 · Score: 3, Funny

What's James Blunt going to do now?????

--
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
1. Re:OMG by wonkey_monkey · 2013-10-30 22:15 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  He can always go back to preventing World War Three.
  
  --
  systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
2. Re:OMG by wonkey_monkey · 2013-10-31 01:24 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Wait til you hear how Avril Lavigne negotiated the 2010 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
  Note to mods though: "Insightful" does not mean "told me something I didn't know."
  
  --
  systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Click fraud is possible! News at 11. by Joining+Yet+Again · 2013-10-30 22:13 · Score: 5, Insightful

This sort of thing is so 1999, however.
These days most sponsors just trust their ad broker to correctly report genuine clicks and withold payment for fraudulent clicks. Because there would be no incentive for an ad broker to under-report genuine clicks, and underreporting by even 100 clicks per sponsor when you have hundreds of thousands of sponsors won't gain you a couple of extra million dollars here and there.
1. Re:Click fraud is possible! News at 11. by wvmarle · 2013-10-30 22:27 · Score: 2
  
  It is not that most advertisers have much choice than to trust their ad broker. Most web sites sell all their ad space to a single broker, and can't be bothered at all selling ad space directly.
2. Re:Click fraud is possible! News at 11. by Charliemopps · 2013-10-31 00:33 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  You've obviously never worked with Marketing people before. It's just one giant clusterfuck of lies. Marketing has to prove their department is worth keeping so they want to inflate the number of clicks they got just as much as the vendor does. Remember the "Got Milk" campaign? One of the largest and most recognized ad campaigns in history and milk sales went DOWN while it was going on. It did more for the stars that showed up in the adds than it ever did for the milk industry.
3. Re:Click fraud is possible! News at 11. by Joining+Yet+Again · 2013-10-31 00:55 · Score: 2
  
  Oh, I've worked with them. They're far better at salesmanship than I'll ever be. I give the client the truth, and the marketing department gives them everything else.
Noun, verb, noun noun verb (or: terrible headline) by wonkey_monkey · 2013-10-30 22:17 · Score: 3, Insightful

Hacker (n.) Spoofs (n.? v.?) Track (n.? v.?) Plays (n.? v.?) To (prep.) Top (adj.? v.?) Music (n.) Charts (n.? v.?)

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systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Buying your posting .... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-30 22:21 · Score: 2

Although a good take on the modern music services and how to increase your rank, go back 10 years and hoards of people were paid to buy multiple copies of CDs and prior to that Vinyl. It shows given enough thinking how a modest amount of effort could keep you in pop tarts and coffee.
1. Re:Buying your posting .... by Dogtanian · 2013-10-31 01:15 · Score: 2
  
  go back 10 years and hoards of people were paid to buy multiple copies of CDs and prior to that Vinyl
  That's certainly true; it's been going on since the 60s, apparently. In the late-80s heavy metal spoof "More Bad News", they go into two shops and buy multiple copies of their own record.
  
  However, bear in mind that if they were caught doing this (something that they supposedly cracked down on from the 80s onwards) they were likely to be banned from the charts- something that was also parodied in More Bad News when their manager tells them they've been banned because "some idiot apparently" went into a shop and bought loads of copies.
  
  In fact, this post suggests that Spotify are doing pretty much that.
  
  --
  "Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Most interesting point by IamTheRealMike · 2013-10-30 22:27 · Score: 5, Interesting

The fact that services don't have automated play de-spamming system should not come as a big surprise, given the pathetic earnings available. That's not research worth doing. But the outcome is - just $1000 for a track being played 24/7? No wonder artists all think Spotify is a sick joke. They won't have to automate anti-abuse systems until the amount they're dishing out to artists goes way, way beyond that paltry amount. It's not even worth gaming their charts right now.
1. Re:Most interesting point by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-30 22:46 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  $1000 for just three "listeners" playing the songs 24/7 for a month. That's 3*30*24=2160hours, so about 50ct per hour played. 50ct is probably more than the royalties on a single CD which the buyers can play as often as they like. If I had 50ct for every hour someone used my software, I'd be a rich man.
2. Re:Most interesting point by MiniMike · 2013-10-31 01:13 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  The actual amount earned in the study is arbitrary. He could have just as easily set up more virtual machines and multiplied the amount, if those were the only source. Also it's not clear if the payment was only from his clicks, or if it includes clicks from unsuspecting listeners who were drawn by the artificially high rating, so your calculation of 50 cents may be off.
3. Re:Most interesting point by sootman · 2013-10-31 03:34 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  > $1000 for a track being played 24/7? No wonder
  > artists all think Spotify is a sick joke.
  Old news. Check out this chart from 3 years ago.
  Another fun fact: Spotify has 20 million songs. Twenty percent of them -- four million songs -- have never been played.
  
  --
  Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
4. Re:Most interesting point by pspahn · 2013-10-31 07:23 · Score: 2
  
  I've always kind of felt the same way. Then one day Michael Kiwanuka came to town.
  A few days prior I had found his album somewhere online and listened to it. I loved it. I saw that he was going to be in town in a few days so I got tickets.
  The show was wonderful, and afterwards he was meeting fans at the merch table. I waited in line behind girls and fanbois that just wanted his autograph or something... so I waited patiently. When it was my turn, I took $10 out of my pocket and gave it to him and he went to grab a CD to give me. I told him no, the $10 was for the album I already downloaded and that I didn't need a CD and I just wanted to thank him.
  Live shows are where you get to potentially have these kinds of moments. I'll never forget that.
  
  --
  Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Complicated by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-30 22:32 · Score: 2

Avril Lavigne was doing this before it was cool.
Re:Noun, verb, noun noun verb (or: terrible headli by wvmarle · 2013-10-30 22:32 · Score: 4, Funny

Learning reading comprehension helps, too. No issues for me understanding what they meant with that headline. And I'm not even a native English speaker.
Now if it were a sentence like "buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo" I'd understand your problem with it.
The virtual world once more duplicates the real by Bruce66423 · 2013-10-30 22:44 · Score: 4, Interesting

Once upon a time it was possible to raise your position in the charts by buying the record in the shops that reported sales, and there was a small industry dedicated to this... Good to see certain traditions haven't been killed by computers!
1. Re:The virtual world once more duplicates the real by MozeeToby · 2013-10-31 01:27 · Score: 2
  
  Don't forget the trick of packaging 2 copies of the music into one disc case, so that a single album sale counted as two. The "top seller" metrics have always been gamed one way or another. If anything is surprising about this research, it's that no one else was already gaming the system this way; if someone were I doubt he would have achieved the number one spot so easily.
Gaining money by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-30 22:45 · Score: 5, Insightful

Actually earning money by doing that is only possible because of a bad compensation model. Currently they just lump all the money from users into a big pile, and then divide that pile by the percentage amount of how much each artist was played. This screws the smaller artist over, because they get nothing, this leads to them dropping away from these kinds of services eventually.
I pay spotify $5 per month. If I listen to only one artist, that artist should get all my money(minus spotify cut). If I listen to nobody, my money should be divided like it is now. If I listen to 5 different artists, my money should be divided amongst them. That way I would actually support the artists that I like, and not lady gaga and justin bieber and random hackers.
1. Re:Gaining money by hairyfish · 2013-10-31 00:16 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Seems odd they they can't adopt your model, I mean they have logs of every song played by which users so it should be trivial to allocate each user's contribution directly to the artists. In fact they could take it a step further and have user charts to see who gave the most money to which artist, then fans could compete with each other to see who is the biggest fan by who pays their favourite artist the most. Then the artist could reward their biggest fans with a phone call or something or a back stage pass. The technology is there to make this work, fans win, the artists win, if only the money grubbers that own the copyrights had more interest in making it work.
2. Re:Gaining money by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-31 00:59 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Those logs are for the NSA only.
Story by Barny · 2013-10-30 23:01 · Score: 4, Informative

The poster should probably have linked this http://youtu.be/PomBYSELEPE which is the guy himself giving his talk on what he did and why.
Some funny stuff.

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...
/me sighs
1. Re:Story by PPH · 2013-10-31 03:05 · Score: 2
  
  I didn't understand the part about "I'm never gonna give you up."
  
  --
  Have gnu, will travel.
Re:Noun, verb, noun noun verb (or: terrible headli by wonkey_monkey · 2013-10-30 23:06 · Score: 3, Interesting

Learning (v.? n.?) reading (v.? n.?) comprehension helps too.
Gah!

No issues for me understanding what they meant with that headline. And I'm not even a native English speaker.
Well, good for you. Maybe it helps that you're not a native English speaker, and are less familiar with the alternate meanings of some words. I happen to have a very good handle on the written word, so maybe that's why I'm overly sensitive to these things.
My point is not that the headline is more likely to be misread than read correctly (although I suspect this particular one might be), but that ambiguity can and should be avoided regardless.

--
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Re:Noun, verb, noun noun verb (or: terrible headli by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-30 23:44 · Score: 2, Interesting

"but that ambiguity can and should be avoided regardless"
I thought you said you were good with the written word? Certainly you know that no native human language passes as a regular language because they're all horribly ambiguous and context sensitive. So much so, that it really is impossible to avoid. I mean, hell, anything can be turned into an innuendo if you add proper inflection. But on a less dirty area the word "lead", is that a collar, a position in a race, a soft heavy metal? Read, is that something I do to a book or have just done to a book. Spoken out loud, now is it red read, read or reed.
One of my favorites comes in with "lead pipe" from the game clue. For the longest time I thought it was some sort of plumbing term, I thought "lead" was as in "I'm leading the race", because in my day and age, you'd never make a pipe out of the metal lead, because it's horrible as a pipe material as it's soft, doesn't hold pressure well, and poisons whatever goes through it. But no, it's the metal. I also wouldn't imagine bashing somebodies head in with something so malleable, I'd assume you'd want to use something a bit harder.
This overly long post I guess is just a way of saying ambiguity in the written word, as long as it's spoken language is more or less unavoidable.
Ballot Stuffing by msobkow · 2013-10-30 23:57 · Score: 2

You mean you can stuff an internet ballot box?
The shock! The horror!
You mean the internet can be full of fraud and lies?!?!?!
Who'd a thunk it. :P

--
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Re:Still calling himself a hacker by realityimpaired · 2013-10-31 00:07 · Score: 4, Funny

Since music was involved, would that make him a smooth criminal?
Re:Noun, verb, noun noun verb (or: terrible headli by wonkey_monkey · 2013-10-31 00:21 · Score: 4, Insightful

So much so, that it really is impossible to avoid.
Of course it isn't.
Ambiguous:

Prostitues appeal to Pope
Less ambiguous:

Prostitues make appeal to Pope

--
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Re:Only Happy When It Rains? by jones_supa · 2013-10-31 00:38 · Score: 4, Funny

Ditto. Garbage is an excellent band. :)
Re:Cost/benefit -- could he make a profit doing it by somersault · 2013-10-31 00:39 · Score: 2

In addition to the other guy's comment, spotify pays around half a cent per streamed track. So currently the answer seems to be "yes". Which is kind of absurd, but interesting. There are lots of shady ways to make money though. Probably best not to think too much about them.

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which is totally what she said
Could anyone tell the difference? by damn_registrars · 2013-10-31 02:02 · Score: 3, Insightful

All he needed to add was some random monologue (preferable to be very angry monologue) and it would fit right in with the top 40.

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Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Here you can hear some of his music by kju · 2013-10-31 03:27 · Score: 2

At least his latest album is still available, and you can hear 30 seconds out of 31 seconds of each track here: http://www.7digital.com/artist/kim-jong-deux/release/a-kim-jong-christmas
Maybe I'm crazy but I actually found the music not too bad. It's weird music but it seems to have something...