> 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.
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.
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."
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?
Too late for me. I was on Spotify since 2013 and switched to Qobuz due to AI, bad recs, and dislike for the company. Qobuz puts much more effort into manual curation so I still find awesome weird music and have encountered 0 AI. Mainly due to not relying on recommendation algos anymore. I'm sure there is still AI in there. Only issue I've encountered is an annoying playback bug when switching from wifi to data.
I was at a department store recently and heard a song I hadn't heard before. There was something strange about the singer's voice, and for a moment I wondered if it was AI generated.
Then I realized, I already can't tell the difference. It already might be! (Probably not, but you never know... maybe they put Spotify on autoplay ;)
How would this even work though? I'm a real musician and producer/engineer. I've gone on tour, put out several albums, and so on. I've also been involved in the music business and worked with a bunch of really well-known artists.
I also have been playing with Suno like everyone else, and have made a whole bunch of songs that I think are hilarious that I've shared with my friends, where I write all the lyrics and detailed notes about what I want the song to be, and then AI does the rest.
I'm not going to post it to Spotify, but if I did, what am I on their list? Am I verified or not? I'm a real musician. I have rooms full of musical instruments that I can play, and I can send pictures of them, but how does that relate to this policy of theirs?
This is a valid approach, and one i use as well. My wife likes flute/meditation music to help her sleep sometimes. Spotify is full AI generated covers in that genre, always at the top of the search results somehow, maybe because it is new?
Anyway, i spend an extra 15 mins digging through for older albums, of which there are some good ones from the 2000s and 2010s.
A good filter on human slop -- in genres where that can be a problem, like children's songs -- is to look for releases before it became popular to self publish on Spotify itself. Sometime around 2015 maybe?
There are definitely exceptions to that rule though (in both directions!), so i don't discount everything released more recently out of hand.
Honestly anything from before and including 2024 is probably safe. Everything took off (including the mass uploading to platforms) in late 2024.
Artists appearing in 2025+ are, unfortunately, going to be mostly AI content farms. Real humans will be the exception and we'll somehow have to tell them apart using side channels like live performances.
This is a good first step, but the badge only verifies the artist is human, not the music. The trend worth expanding is provenance for the work itself I expect human-made content to become a prized commodity once that signal is credible.
I do wonder why AI music is so lame. Every previous technological advancement in music produced amazing new sounds and styles but AI music seems to just be emulating lowest common denominator pop sludge. Where's the Bruce Haack or Kraftwerk of AI? Surely there's a previously unimaginable sound palette out there that we could be pulling from. Why is it all so BAD?
I don't know about music, but there are plenty of pioneers of AI art who were pretty interesting in my opinion. Mario Klingemann, Tom White, Memo Akten and Samim Winiger are some names I remember who made a lot of cool stuff. I admit I haven't kept up at what they're doing today, though (maybe because I left Twitter, and I think many of them did too).
There's something about the transformer model where you stick a lot of data in and output tokens that kicks out stuff which is kind of average without much underlying understanding. I'm looking forward to AI that goes beyond that but so far it's kind of bland.
As a classical music fan there's a kind of variation in depth and complexity that probably peaks with late Bach and Beethoven and I always thought it would be interesting if tech could go beyond that but so far it's not close to equaling it.
AI music is not a technological advancement in music. AI music is just a side effect of advancements in generative AI. This can be extended to other areas where generative AI gains traction. AI generated texts are not literary advancements in literature, AI generated art are not advancements in art etc.
As for the lowest common denominator part, it is true for all types of generative AI. AI will almost always spit out the lowest common denominator of the medium it tries to generate.
I added two songs from an AI artist to my Liked Songs back when all this started. Now I've removed them and have spent the last 14 months trying to convince Spotify that I'm not interested in this artist. Meanwhile they keep plastering every new single this slop generator pumps out onto the front of my homescreen. Sometimes it's multiple releases per week. Absolutely infuriating.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 72.0 ms ] threadDoesn'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.
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...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/214151728-mood-machine
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?
Then I realized, I already can't tell the difference. It already might be! (Probably not, but you never know... maybe they put Spotify on autoplay ;)
Strange times.
I also have been playing with Suno like everyone else, and have made a whole bunch of songs that I think are hilarious that I've shared with my friends, where I write all the lyrics and detailed notes about what I want the song to be, and then AI does the rest.
I'm not going to post it to Spotify, but if I did, what am I on their list? Am I verified or not? I'm a real musician. I have rooms full of musical instruments that I can play, and I can send pictures of them, but how does that relate to this policy of theirs?
Anything before 2023 is most certainly from a human
Anyway, i spend an extra 15 mins digging through for older albums, of which there are some good ones from the 2000s and 2010s.
A good filter on human slop -- in genres where that can be a problem, like children's songs -- is to look for releases before it became popular to self publish on Spotify itself. Sometime around 2015 maybe?
There are definitely exceptions to that rule though (in both directions!), so i don't discount everything released more recently out of hand.
Artists appearing in 2025+ are, unfortunately, going to be mostly AI content farms. Real humans will be the exception and we'll somehow have to tell them apart using side channels like live performances.
If they are "soulless" then they should close their ears rather than trying to maim others.
As a classical music fan there's a kind of variation in depth and complexity that probably peaks with late Bach and Beethoven and I always thought it would be interesting if tech could go beyond that but so far it's not close to equaling it.
As for the lowest common denominator part, it is true for all types of generative AI. AI will almost always spit out the lowest common denominator of the medium it tries to generate.