What I would like the most as user, is that my money gets only distributed to artists I'm listening to. If Spotify costs let's say $10 per month, and I listen 50% artist A and 50% artist B, then both artists should get $5 from my money, minus Spotify fees. Taylor Swift should not get anything from my money. This model is more fair, would greatly help niche artist, and bonus - this kind of fraud would not be possible. This fraud is direct effect of pooling all money together and counting only total number of streams.

I wish the article gave a bit more context on how he was caught. This seems like a major hit and I remember someone talking about AI generated music on Spotify by the few "authors".

While with this case the "fake artist" might have generated enough noise to be caught, I wonder how many are scheming and lurking in shadow.