So one way this fraud is committed is by consuming the content (youtube videos, spotify plays, etc) and taking in the direct revenue streams.
The bigger picture is virality. Nobody wants to watch your video with 100 views. Same video with 10M views, now everyone has to watch it.
The music business has been doing this so much for so long that it's to the point where I automatically distrust everything that's "popular" as having been gamed.
Just like the old-school radio scam, where radio DJ's were paid to say they played certain songs but they didn't. Then people created charts using that data and paid artists found themselves popular... system(s) have been always gamed :)
The bigger picture is virality. Nobody wants to watch your video with 100 views. Same video with 10M views, now everyone has to watch it.
The music business has been doing this so much for so long that it's to the point where I automatically distrust everything that's "popular" as having been gamed.