Is It Enough For Artists?

Streaming music giant Spotify has helped create plenty of divisive dialogue in the industry since its existence has grown in scale. There are lingering questions over why certain artists get the sudden success and Spotify listeners that they do, and why some bands have chosen to remove their music catalogs from the app’s presence entirely.

While it’s easy to also get caught up in more positive topics, like ranking some of the best songs with over a billion Spotify streams, a bigger debate has emerged related to original material on leading streaming platforms like Spotify. That’s the growing presence of music generated by artificial intelligence, and how the service has chosen to respond to it.

The Impact Of AI Music In The Streaming Music Industry

With the expansion of the usage of artificial intelligence as well as its improving capabilities, the presence of music and artists generated by AI has only grown in scope. Recently, a Welsh rock band named Holding Absence spoke out about being eclipsed in Spotify listeners by Bleeding Verse, an AI-generated group reportedly inspired by bands like Holding Absence.

The band has since come out in opposition to AI-generated music. Another artist with growing popularity on Spotify called The Velvet Sundown also made headlines for this reason, as everything from their songs to their artist bio was seemingly generated with AI. A large portion of their support was allegedly brought on by being featured in Spotify playlists.

With criticism mounting for the practice of artificial intelligence in music, Spotify has broken its silence about the issue in a blog post, highlighting the unsettling, rapid pace at which this practice has advanced. They’ve claimed to have removed 75 million AI spam tracks and are administering several additional actions.

What Spotify Has Proposed To Do To Help Curb The AI Imbalance

One of the biggest steps Spotify is taking is the implementation of DDEX, a system that labels and identifies the usage of AI music in song/album credits. Anyone submitting music to the service will be required to state how and where artificial intelligence was utilized, which the app will then display prominently.

Another incoming Spotify rule will be stronger protections against AI voice clones and impersonation. This would theoretically help artists to be better shielded from other users fraudulently uploading AI soundalikes of creative work to their Spotify accounts.

Lastly, a music spam filter will be gradually rolled out that will attempt to track/stamp out fraudulent aspects from users, like mass uploads, duplicates, SEO hacks, and other sketchy methods to boost profiles. While these propositions do seem to be a step in the right direction, there are still remaining questions.

Is Spotify Going Far Enough To Protect The Work Of Original Musical Creators?

Despite Spotify’s measures to identify artificial intelligence usage and help eradicate fraudulence, does this truly represent the protection of real musical artists? Holding Absence (a legitimate band) is still being surpassed by an AI-generated creation that modeled inspiration from them, and Spotify continues to actively support the technology and individuals who use it.

Just because the consumption of artificial intelligence is being labeled and spam usage is being removed, does this still not work to the disadvantage of bands/artists who create everything legitimately from scratch? AI still crowds the marketplace and helps threaten the livelihood of musicians trying to make a living.

So while Spotify is creating helpful measures, the moves feel like they come up short in supporting legitimate creators. And the more that countermeasures like these ultimately fall flat, the worse the issue of AI-generated music will become.