Musicians have long criticized Spotify for its small fee system and questionable content rating practices. Now artists have to face a completely different problem: increased competition from AI-generated tracks, some of which have gained hundreds of thousands of listens.
“There are many reports [AI-generated music] recommended to people, sometimes even hundreds of thousands of games, or more,” said Ed Newton-Rex, former vice president of audio at Stability AI, who left the company in November 2023 over concerns about its approach to copyright. Newton-Rex is now the CEO of Fairly Trained, a nonprofit that accredits artificial intelligence companies to receive information through fair training.
Among those alleged AI-produced bands—believed to be impersonal in part because they seem to have no online presence other than Spotify—are Jet Fuel & Ginger Ales. The band has earned the “Verified Artist” badge on Spotify and has 414,500 monthly listeners for their covers of The La’s and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. However, Redditors are convinced that the band was created by AI.
They are not the only group believed to have AI powers. Groups like Awake Past 3 and Gutter Grinders have hundreds of thousands of monthly listeners on the app, and they often share some dubious characteristics: the obscure vocals in the valley, the plain-Jane branding of their logo, and the lack of biographical information.
One singer, Sofia Pitcher, managed to collect huge streaming numbers between December 2023 and March 2024 for songs like “Stone Age” and “Rock,” both from her album, The Stone Age. But Pitcher wasn’t there, according to an investigation by a Spanish newspaper El Diario.
Spotify did not respond to a request for comment by deadline, which included clarifying whether Pitcher, Jet Fuel & Ginger Ales, and Awake Past 3, are in fact AI-generated artists. (Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said in a rare BBC interview in September 2023 that the app has no plans to turn off AI music.)
A Spotify spokesperson said the streaming giant “does not have a policy against artists who create content using autotune or AI tools, as long as the content does not violate our other policies, including our deceptive content policy, which prevents impersonation.” The company has in the past taken action against artists who were allegedly produced by AI (Pitcher’s songs are no longer distributed). A spokesperson for Spotify did not provide data on it Fast company how many AI artists are on stage, or their impact on the broadcast.
While AI is a common culprit here, the problem is one that plagued Spotify even in the pre-AI era. Stockholm-based musician Johan Röhr has been called “the most famous musician you’ve never heard of” in the media, because he saw the ability to upload songs under fake names and bank the profits from various accounts. While standard streams are reported to pay between $0.003 and $0.004, combining those streams across a number of different artist names and genres can soon add up to smaller amounts. Röhr’s 650 noms de plume have been collectively circulated 15 billion times, according to the report. The guard, with analysts suggesting that he made $3 million on the platform in 2022 alone.
“People have been making albums and songs on Spotify that are just over that 30-second limit to get paid for years,” said Kieron Donoghue, founder of Playlist Alert and Humble Angel Records. But while Röhr’s music is original, some have not been as creative in their output. “There’s always that kind of thing: white noise generators, or relaxing piano sounds, all that kind of stuff. And Spotify saw it where it was due and stopped it. “
Donoghue maintains a generally optimistic view of the rise of AI songs on Spotify. “It’s just a matter of some people trying to make a quick buck, like they’ve been doing on Spotify and they always will,” he said. “I don’t see it as a threat as it is to anyone’s lives.”
But Newton-Rex, the Fairly Trained CEO, sings a different tune. “It’s clear that this will eat into the profits and sources of income paid to the original artists,” he said, and noted his concern that the AI applications used to create this type of content are exploiting the work of the original artists by reusing them. their music as training data—without compensation. Newton-Rex calls it “copyright fraud in essence.”
“Spotify should not be allowing music on the platform that uses models when it is a serious concern [they are] trained in the work of other artists without permission,” argued Newton-Rex. For AI-approved music, he says, “they have to label it so people can choose whether to listen to it. . . . And I think [Spotify] maybe you shouldn’t be recommending it.”
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