Is AI Music Spamming Spotify? New Song Raises Questions

Are AI-powered bots attacking Spotify? It’s a question some people are asking.

This latest twist in artificial intelligence’s rapidly evolving role in the music industry came to light on Twitter. A user named Adam Faze recently revealed that he “stumbled upon the strangest thing” while using Spotify.

“One song kept blaring on Spotify radio this week.” wrote The self-proclaimed “Studio Chief” of an entity called FazeWorld. “Every time I looked it was a completely different song title and artist. So I started tracking. Here are 49 of them.”

49 nearly identical pieces of 41s, 53s and 76s are featured in a playlist titled “These are all the same songs”. As expected, the ‘artists’ behind the instrumental tracks, Grakk (2,108 monthly listeners), Moditarians (980 monthly listeners) and Bones (2,309 monthly listeners) spend less than a minute per song. seems to specialize only in creating songs for

In addition to continuing to stream live on Spotify at the time of this writing, the 49 tracks in question (and additional uploads of the same songs “released” under titles not included in the playlist) , was able to stream on certain competing streaming services.

For example, ‘Trey Dawson’ contributed ‘Isabelle Morninglocks’ to Amazon Music and YouTube (the only track on the ‘album’ of the same name, this song is attributed to ‘WorldMusicOfficeFrance’), but not to Tidal. did not do it. (French business registry records associate WorldMusicOffice with an individual who, according to their LinkedIn profile, specializes in artificial intelligence.) As mentioned above, content and length are very similar, but playlists The pieces are slightly different, apparently enough to prevent automatic deletion.

One Twitter user asked the aforementioned Adam Faze about the circumstances surrounding the discovery of so many songs on hand. In response, Faze – the eponymous company FazeWorld has been billed on Twitter as a “media conglomerate in the making” and allegedly linking to a seemingly single-page website – is frequently repeated. reported that the track “started to be all the other songs after that.” for a while. “

In any case, observers have offered multiple explanations for how and why AI songs seem to be proliferating on Spotify and elsewhere. Among other things, the significant revenues paid to music rights holders by the Stockholm-based business have drawn attention.

But again, “fake” artists who specifically don’t try to make a living out of music and refer to profiles created for people and acts that don’t exist (apart from their digital presence) are almost new. not.

Back in March 2022, the Swedish Musicians’ Union opposed the proliferation of fake artists on Spotify, and the upload of “white noise” received more than a few plays (and significant royalty payments) in recent years. Achieved. With current systems freed from concerns about disappointing fans, customers, or critics, and boosted by the extensive capabilities of today’s artificial intelligence, these and similar profiles could safely be flooded with AI music. Evidence shows that there is.

Of course, the proliferation of AI-powered music in general (and audio that isn’t music at all) is making it increasingly difficult for the right artists to stand out from the crowd and make a living. And since the underlying technology is still in its early stages, it’s worth keeping an eye on the situation. Whether this is an anomaly or a harbinger of a troubling reality, it moves forward.