The more appropriate question is why they published a AI artist at all. I think Spotify (or its owners/investors) might actually benefit from recommending AI-generated music by not having to pay real artists.
Like Spotify owns distribution, their largest investor Tencent Music Entertainment Group publishes AI-generated music = almost infinite profit.
From news: Tencent Music demonstrated strong revenue (1) growth in Q4 2025, with total revenues increasing by 16% year-over-year.
CEO of Tencent Music stated, "Our robust revenue growth and expansion in non-subscription services highlight our strategic focus on diversifying revenue streams. However, we acknowledge the need to address earnings challenges to meet investor expectations."
> The more appropriate question is why they published a AI artist at all.
Because they allow anyone to upload to Spotify. There's nothing stopping me, you, or anyone from generating AI tracks with Suno & friends, downloading them, and using a service like LANDR or Amuse to distribute them to Spotify, all for free.
> Like Spotify owns distribution, their largest investor Tencent Music Entertainment Group publishes AI-generated music = almost infinite profit.
This assumes that real people are listening to AI-generated music which does not seem to be the case. According to Deezer, 85% of streams on AI-generated music are fraudulent.[0] It's largely a vanity ouroboros where someone with more money than sense generates a song, pays bots to get fraudulent streams, and uses those streams to generate vanity metrics. Consumers are by and large not listening to AI generated music.
> Lie. You will not. You need to go through the distributor (1), and it has always been this way.
Er yes, which is why I mentioned LANDR and Amuse, both of which are on the page you linked. I mentioned those two specifically because I know they don't charge up-front and instead take a % of royalties, so they're ideal for flooding Spotify with AI slop. I'm not sure which part you think is a lie.
> You need to go through a distributor (1) that does due diligence first, and it has always been this way.
I see you edited your comment. Distributors do not do any sort of "due diligence". For the free distributors, you don't even need to give them personal information until you try to actually cash out your earnings. For DistroKid, when I first signed up I put in my credit card info, submitted my first song and it was up on Spotify 3 days later.
I would love to be able to filter out AI-generated music entirely. I stopped using Spotify's Discovery function as I can't bear this glitchy, really bad slop. It's like those "bad kitty" animations, but in music form. It's really insulting, both for the audience and artists, that they are promoting such lousy content. I hope that Spotify won't take the route of enshittification, quite literally.
Podcasts, audiobooks, AI music, and now an entire fitness hub - they really don't want to pay actual artists anything for their music while jacking up prices for everyone else.
(Oh, and sitting back and crying "app fairness" for quite some time, but it's odd that they haven't been complaining about Apple in a hot minute in the DSA fight yet still won't ship long overdue support like AirPlay 2...)
That actually hurts a little. I hope you reconsider, music is an art, and allowing a computer to regurgitate previous works over and over and be ok with it is awful.
Art is to be experienced and enjoyed, not just take whatever trash is thrown at you and be ok with it.
The headline makes this seem like they're labeling AI music, but it's actually just a scammer filter. Spotify is just making their internal anti-bot flags public-facing.
Can I have a way to exclude all AI-generated music from my recommended songs as well?
Doesn't this only verify against content farms, not AI in general (i.e. I can get verified after making all the AI slop I want, as long as my human name is attached to it)?
Can Spotify actually become human- and artist-first? Remember the magic of 8Tracks community made playlists? Those were incredible. And compared to Spotify's alternative of AI-generated playlists, AI-prompt-driven playlists, and AI DJs? _Yuck!_
Can I manage a catalogue of albums in Spotify without getting thrown into my playlist's list? Can I get extra content with my albums, like iTunes used to do? Behind the scenes, session tracks, lyric books and session photos?
Spotify, of all places, should be a refuge for artists and a place to celebrate human creativity. It is SO COMPLETELY the opposite of that, from top to bottom.
> Can Spotify actually become human- and artist-first?
No, it can't. Its founder Daniel Ek is a war profiteer. He is by definition anti-human.
Spotify itself is actively anti-artist. It has the lowest pay rates in the industry and is embracing AI replacing humans so they can pay humans even less.
Stop using it and vote with your wallet. Literally any alternative you choose is an improvement for artists over Spotify.
Big Bandcamp fan, I get almost all my music from there. But their AI removal (well, or piracy removal for that matter) is rather lacking. Any action takes over a week, sometimes more. Just like with clear piracy (pre release leaks have been up for months), and when they do, they just remove it, whoever bought it is out of luck.
> With Spotify targeting AI-generated music and personas, some on social media have pointed out a verified account would only prove an artist was human, not that the music was made without utilising AI.
how are people getting this AI music on Spotify? where are you finding it? for example the home recommendations for me today are The Beths, Big Thief, Geese, and Sleater-Kinney. and it is all albums I have already have listened to, but fine, whatever, that's just bad recommendations, not AI.
generally I use either the search box, which is always going to return the Geese album and not AI slop if I type "Getting Killed", or the library view on the left side, I don't think I've never seen an AI album on Spotify, where are you getting them?
For me, before I canceled, about 20% of the weekly "Release radar" list was obvious AI slop, with zero indication that it was happening and no way to opt out.
It probably depends on which discovery channel you're using and whether the recommendation algorithm has you pegged as someone willing to try new / less popular bands. But it's definitely an issue on the platform. I never sought AI content and always diligently downvoted it, and it would still keep showing up.
It's only a matter of time until streaming succumbs to slop, much like social media has. If it allows Spotify to reduce royalty payouts and attrition doesn't meaningfully increase, they'll keep supporting it. Meanwhile, real artists suffer and the rich get richer.
The more appropriate question is why they published a AI artist at all. I think Spotify (or its owners/investors) might actually benefit from recommending AI-generated music by not having to pay real artists.
Like Spotify owns distribution, their largest investor Tencent Music Entertainment Group publishes AI-generated music = almost infinite profit.
From news: Tencent Music demonstrated strong revenue (1) growth in Q4 2025, with total revenues increasing by 16% year-over-year.
CEO of Tencent Music stated, "Our robust revenue growth and expansion in non-subscription services highlight our strategic focus on diversifying revenue streams. However, we acknowledge the need to address earnings challenges to meet investor expectations."
1. https://www.investing.com/news/transcripts/earnings-call-tra...
> The more appropriate question is why they published a AI artist at all.
Because they allow anyone to upload to Spotify. There's nothing stopping me, you, or anyone from generating AI tracks with Suno & friends, downloading them, and using a service like LANDR or Amuse to distribute them to Spotify, all for free.
> Like Spotify owns distribution, their largest investor Tencent Music Entertainment Group publishes AI-generated music = almost infinite profit.
This assumes that real people are listening to AI-generated music which does not seem to be the case. According to Deezer, 85% of streams on AI-generated music are fraudulent.[0] It's largely a vanity ouroboros where someone with more money than sense generates a song, pays bots to get fraudulent streams, and uses those streams to generate vanity metrics. Consumers are by and large not listening to AI generated music.
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/20/deezer-says-44-of-songs-up...
Not directly. You need to go through a distributor (1) that does due diligence, and it has always been this way.
1. https://artists.spotify.com/providers
> Lie. You will not. You need to go through the distributor (1), and it has always been this way.
Er yes, which is why I mentioned LANDR and Amuse, both of which are on the page you linked. I mentioned those two specifically because I know they don't charge up-front and instead take a % of royalties, so they're ideal for flooding Spotify with AI slop. I'm not sure which part you think is a lie.
> You need to go through a distributor (1) that does due diligence first, and it has always been this way.
I see you edited your comment. Distributors do not do any sort of "due diligence". For the free distributors, you don't even need to give them personal information until you try to actually cash out your earnings. For DistroKid, when I first signed up I put in my credit card info, submitted my first song and it was up on Spotify 3 days later.
Apologies, I had correct my comment prior to your reply.
> Because they allow anyone to upload to Spotify.
No one is allowed to upload directly to Spotify.
I would love to be able to filter out AI-generated music entirely. I stopped using Spotify's Discovery function as I can't bear this glitchy, really bad slop. It's like those "bad kitty" animations, but in music form. It's really insulting, both for the audience and artists, that they are promoting such lousy content. I hope that Spotify won't take the route of enshittification, quite literally.
That's every move Spotify has done recently.
Podcasts, audiobooks, AI music, and now an entire fitness hub - they really don't want to pay actual artists anything for their music while jacking up prices for everyone else.
(Oh, and sitting back and crying "app fairness" for quite some time, but it's odd that they haven't been complaining about Apple in a hot minute in the DSA fight yet still won't ship long overdue support like AirPlay 2...)
I would have expected a "un-verified" batch, this way they're giving AI "artists" legitimacy.
Do you have to pay for the verified badge? How much more rev do they get?
Someone should make a free streaming service that’s only AI music. I’m not that picky.
That actually hurts a little. I hope you reconsider, music is an art, and allowing a computer to regurgitate previous works over and over and be ok with it is awful.
Art is to be experienced and enjoyed, not just take whatever trash is thrown at you and be ok with it.
Plenty of people use music as a fidget toy while working or studying. Not everything has to be a masterpiece.
It's called youtube.
Kind of like a music-version of the Enhanced Games?
https://www.enhanced.com/
That's just http://suno.com.
The headline makes this seem like they're labeling AI music, but it's actually just a scammer filter. Spotify is just making their internal anti-bot flags public-facing.
Right. They sued the first guy who did this, but now there's too many. Sucks to be an innovator.
put the onus on the people, of course. how about make AI music come with a warning label?
I think I’m ok with this but can you search for only AI? Might be interesting sometimes.
Can I have a way to exclude all AI-generated music from my recommended songs as well?
Doesn't this only verify against content farms, not AI in general (i.e. I can get verified after making all the AI slop I want, as long as my human name is attached to it)?
Can Spotify actually become human- and artist-first? Remember the magic of 8Tracks community made playlists? Those were incredible. And compared to Spotify's alternative of AI-generated playlists, AI-prompt-driven playlists, and AI DJs? _Yuck!_
Can I manage a catalogue of albums in Spotify without getting thrown into my playlist's list? Can I get extra content with my albums, like iTunes used to do? Behind the scenes, session tracks, lyric books and session photos?
Spotify, of all places, should be a refuge for artists and a place to celebrate human creativity. It is SO COMPLETELY the opposite of that, from top to bottom.
> Can Spotify actually become human- and artist-first?
No, it can't. Its founder Daniel Ek is a war profiteer. He is by definition anti-human.
Spotify itself is actively anti-artist. It has the lowest pay rates in the industry and is embracing AI replacing humans so they can pay humans even less.
Stop using it and vote with your wallet. Literally any alternative you choose is an improvement for artists over Spotify.
If you are strict about anti-AI, you might find Bandcamp appealing. https://blog.bandcamp.com/2026/01/13/keeping-bandcamp-human/
More info:
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/a-complete-guide-to-quit...
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/artists-le...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Spotify
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ek
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsing_(company)
Big Bandcamp fan, I get almost all my music from there. But their AI removal (well, or piracy removal for that matter) is rather lacking. Any action takes over a week, sometimes more. Just like with clear piracy (pre release leaks have been up for months), and when they do, they just remove it, whoever bought it is out of luck.
I love the site, but they have a long way to go.
Absolutely agree. I just want to block all AI „music“.
This episode of Darknet Diaries was eye opening: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/171/
> With Spotify targeting AI-generated music and personas, some on social media have pointed out a verified account would only prove an artist was human, not that the music was made without utilising AI.
how are people getting this AI music on Spotify? where are you finding it? for example the home recommendations for me today are The Beths, Big Thief, Geese, and Sleater-Kinney. and it is all albums I have already have listened to, but fine, whatever, that's just bad recommendations, not AI.
generally I use either the search box, which is always going to return the Geese album and not AI slop if I type "Getting Killed", or the library view on the left side, I don't think I've never seen an AI album on Spotify, where are you getting them?
For me, before I canceled, about 20% of the weekly "Release radar" list was obvious AI slop, with zero indication that it was happening and no way to opt out.
It probably depends on which discovery channel you're using and whether the recommendation algorithm has you pegged as someone willing to try new / less popular bands. But it's definitely an issue on the platform. I never sought AI content and always diligently downvoted it, and it would still keep showing up.
Great, now add the ability for me to have any non-Verified artists become completely invisible to me in the application.
It's only a matter of time until streaming succumbs to slop, much like social media has. If it allows Spotify to reduce royalty payouts and attrition doesn't meaningfully increase, they'll keep supporting it. Meanwhile, real artists suffer and the rich get richer.