Likely they use a front service such as TuneCore which gives them access to all the streaming services. Just using Spotify is unnecessary risky if the goal is simply money laundering.
(However, if the goal is to do pick up some royalties from all those background plays, and I think that's more common, then Spotify is clearly better)
For an example of spam/fraud, look up the album "Angry man" on Deezer. Or rather, the albums. There are 200+ of them, all with the same stock image album art. That spammer is easily recognizable, he's been doing a similar bulk upload several times per month for maybe 10 years now. He's an example of a spammer who is present on very many streaming services. Spotify has kicked him off, though.
Not sure if I'm seeing something different to you...?
https://twitter.com/HaraldKml/status/1562137336409985025/pho...
But when I go to load the site through my VPS in Germany... I see the "292 albums" you're talking about! And yep, umpteen copies of the same album art just like in your screenshot.
Wow. I think this might be due to Australian consumer protection laws dictating that faulty products MUST be returnable. (Buying stuff in Australia is actually kind of cool because if I don't get exactly what I paid for I don't generally have to make very much effort to get a refund.) IIUC this policy has taken impressive chunks out of pretty big players.
...And so it would seem I'm simply not seeing anything I might reasonably and correctly regard as faulty.
Well that's an interesting database column then.
(I unfortunately have less familiarity than I probably should about this status quo (given I live here :D), but I can at least offer the "Consumers" and "Business" headings (and all the individual sections in the associated dropdowns) at the top of https://www.accc.gov.au/ as a cursory indication of the level of pedantry and protection involved.)
It's entirely possible I have the wrong end of the stick here and something else is the axis point. I wonder what would happen if you loaded the site through an AU proxy/VPN. I'm also curious if any other countries cause this... different presentation.
There are also problems with this theory, though:
* "Their cut" should, from my understanding of copyright law, be 100%. I don't understand how the spammer would make money off it at all.
* From the metadata, the spammer's one-off label claims to directly own both the music and the recording rights.
* The spammed artists do not seem limited to one of the big three's back catalog.
* The spammed artists include some which are/were well known for not allowing third party compilation albums with their music.
Deanie Richardson
Danny Richardson
Dani Richardson
So, they are typo-squatting as part of the scheme.
I asssume money laundering would work by setting up Spotify accounts with stolen money (that they used to buy gift cards?), then streaming the fake songs.
Does spotify pay artists differently for paid vs free accounts? If not, then presumably they use free accounts for the bots, so it isn't really money laundering.
I guess if you get some streams from real people, then using paid bot accounts might still be a reasonably cash efficient form of money laundering.