Tired Of AI Slop In Your Spotify Playlist? New Company Regulations May Soon Fix That

Ever open up a playlist on a music streaming platform and come across a song that might be intriguing at first only to find out that it doesn't even have a real artist and was cobbled together by AI?

Spotify on Thursday announced at a press conference that it will be enforcing regulations within its platform to provide against precisely that.

The firm aims to “protect authentic artists from spam and impersonation and deception”, and to prevent users from feeling "duped", according to Charlie Helman, the company's global head of music product.

The company announced at a press conference that it will be partnering with DDEX, an organisation that sets music standards to use metadata to disclose whether AI was used to make a track.

The music streaming platform will also be combating low-effort and dubious ways of using AI to mass produce cheap tracks with vocals, and songwriting of real artists to garner views and will prohibit songs that use vocals of other artists without their permission.

This means Spotify users can say goodbye to gimmicky AI-made genre covers of Kendrick Lamar's 'Not Like Us.'

Spotify plans to do this via a spam filter which will remove such tracks as well as those tracks designed to "game the system", such as music that is only over 30 seconds, or posting the same tracks with different metadata.

This includes any and all AI-generated sounds such, as singing and instrumentation, as well as AI being used in the production, mixing or mastering of a song, according to Sam Duboff, head of marketing and policy.

Duboff reported that 15 record labels had committed to adopting the disclosures but said that there wouldn't be a specific timeline of adoption due to complications with credit information.

The company landed in hot water with relation to AI when prominent music journalist Liz Pelly did an investigative exposé report titled 'Ghosts In The Machine — Spotify’s Plot Against Musicians'. It said that the company was buying music from small artists and producers and then attributing it to fake AI-generated artists with fabricated biographies.

This music was then allegedly included in the company's popular music playlists.

Pelly alleged that this practice was undertaken so that Spotify could avoid paying royalties to musicians and record labels and reduce their expenses.

Duboff told reporters at the conference that these claims were "categorically and absolutely false", and said that all of the music of the platformed is creator-owned and uploaded by licensed third parties.

He also told Spotify that the company does not add AI music to playlists or promoting AI music for financial benefit.