8 ms·

Spotify adds 'Verified' badges to distinguish human artists from AI

287 points by reconnecting 6mo ago

bilsbie 6mo ago
Someone should make a free streaming service that’s only AI music. I’m not that picky.
- raincole 6mo ago
  It's called youtube.
- NoSalt 6mo ago
  Kind of like a music-version of the Enhanced Games? https://www.enhanced.com/ https://www.enhanced.com/
- sigmonsays 6mo ago
  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.
  - post-it 6mo ago
    Plenty of people use music as a fidget toy while working or studying. Not everything has to be a masterpiece.
    - gynecologist 6mo ago
      There's more quality ambient music out there recorded by actual humans than you can listen to in a lifetime already.
      - Sharlin 6mo ago
        Yeah. It’s not like there’s a dearth of human-created music.
      - dale_glass 6mo ago
        Not always quite enough. I've seen a few people discuss a desire for custom "Muzak", AI generated to fulfill a need. Upload your gym workout, and have it generate tracks to match each exercise -- right genre, BPM, type of track, right times of intensity and cooldown. Of course you can do this with human made music in theory, but it'd be very hard to find the right tracks to match and you'd probably struggle with variety.
    - hbn 6mo ago
      I think that attitude has downstream effects that are spiritually unhealthy. You should feel off-put by the idea of mentally sating your human brain with a soulless, algorithmically optimized imitation of art. We evolved with art as a species. I don't think anyone should be trying to "logic" their way into thinking humans are optional in art, even if it's something you're passively consuming.
      - satvikpendem 6mo ago
        If your brain can't tell the difference, then...what's the difference? In other words I can like human made art but it doesn't mean I won't sometimes want to see other imitations of it, especially if they're interesting.
  - niek_pas 6mo ago
    My take is that music _can be_ an art but it can also be other things, the same way sequential photos played back quickly can be an art but can also be a screensaver. (I say this as a musician if that gets me extra cred somehow.)
  - NitpickLawyer 6mo ago
    That's a bit gatekeepy IMO. Some music is art. Most music isn't. It also depends what you want from music. There's a difference between relaxing while listening to great songs and "background" music for work. I can't listen to lyrics while writing / coding / working in general, so I prefer simple repetitive or predictable genres. EDM / trance / techno / lofi depending on what I'm working on. We can agree that doesn't have to be art to be useful. > allowing a computer to regurgitate previous works That's not what "AI" music is, and you really should read into how it works before regurgitating (heh) miss-conceptions.
  - pesus 6mo ago
    The way so many people on HN and elsewhere don't value art at all is pretty depressing. I don't know if it's a side effect of lack of exposure to art and the humanities growing up or something else, but I can't imagine living that way. What a dull experience life would be without art.
    - satvikpendem 6mo ago
      It's equally interesting to hear people talk about "what a dull experience life would be without art" because sometimes people want low brow entertainment, some of the time, as it's not like they're wholly rejecting human made art altogether. Sometimes I will laugh at a dumb AI generated video, it doesn't mean that's all I watch or experience.
    - maplethorpe 6mo ago
      HN is an interesting case, because a lot of those types of comments are likely to be either astroturfing, people who work at those companies, or people who are invested in them. I wouldn't extrapolate too much to the rest of humanity based on the people here.
      - pixel_popping 6mo ago
        You might overthink this as well, reality is most people just want to type `XXXX mix` and they just want to have this playing for 1h with nice backgrounds and call it a day, I doubt most actually care if it's AI or not. They might care only if you tell them. I hope I'm wrong. There is also the genuine interest in a group to play AI tracks out of curiosity which is entertaining on its own as well, especially for the ones unaware of what it can produce (particularly since 2026).
  - satvikpendem 6mo ago
    It's like junk food, sometimes I want trash, especially trash that can be highly specifically tuned to my particular taste or mood that day, e.g. a mashup of X and Y genres with Z influence, as Suno does. Humans cannot make specific music like that because we are finite in time and effort.
    - 4ffg 6mo ago
      no trashfood is attractive due to the economics of it. if really good tasting food was just as easy to come by and cheap, the demand for fastfood would decline massively.
  - bilsbie 6mo ago
    I actually agree with you but I consider most modern music to already be artificially created. It’s not a computer but rather coming from industry chosen artists, corporate publishing, corporate marketing, and so on. Each step removing any beauty or controversy.
    - mh2266 6mo ago
      you can easily pull up contemporary indie bands with 5000 listeners on spotify, you can also easily pull up non-modern music too. if you want something definitely non-corporate, they have Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music.
  - CrimsonRain 6mo ago
    most music, movies, "drawings" etc are art, and are trash. all these "art with soul" and "soulless trash ai" from people who don't even believe in soul are getting tiresome. Please, listen to the music you think is soulful and leave rest of us out of your luddites. Nobody is asking to ban arts by humans.
  - kome 6mo ago
    the slop existed before AI and in every era (from the beatles to britney spears), and for some people, it's all they need. why demonize AI-generated music?
- fragmede 6mo ago
  That's just http://suno.com http://suno.com.
RankingMember 6mo ago
Great, now add the ability for me to have any non-Verified artists become completely invisible to me in the application.
galleywest200 6mo ago
> 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.
AftHurrahWinch 6mo ago
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.
- tosti 6mo ago
  Right. They sued the first guy who did this, but now there's too many. Sucks to be an innovator.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 6mo ago
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dlivingston 6mo ago
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.
- easydidit 6mo ago
  Absolutely agree. I just want to block all AI „music“. This episode of Darknet Diaries was eye opening: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/171/ https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/171/
- coldpie 6mo ago
  > 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/ https://blog.bandcamp.com/2026/01/13/keeping-bandcamp-human/ More info: https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/a-complete-guide-to-quitting-spotify https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/a-complete-guide-to-quit... https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/artists-left-spotify-ceo-daniel-ek-military-tech-1235425098/ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/artists-le... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Spotify https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Spotify https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsing_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsing_(company)
cdrnsf 6mo ago
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.
reconnecting 6mo ago
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-transcript-tencent-music-q4-2025-misses-eps-stock-drops-93CH-4565737 https://www.investing.com/news/transcripts/earnings-call-tra...
- kotaKat 6mo ago
  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...)
  - the_snooze 6mo ago
    I gave up on Spotify when they did their push into podcasts and audiobooks. It became clear that they weren't really interested in serving their core customer base of people who just want to listen to music.
  - senko 6mo ago
    You're right on what they're doing, but not the why: 1. They're getting the short end of the deal with music licensing (as are artists, btw) 2. They can't pay the artists more: the vast majority of the money goes to labels 3. The only way Spotify can grow profits if it moves to content that's not under the iron grip of the labels: podcasts, audiobooks, etc. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47783435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47783435
bilsbie 6mo ago
I think I’m ok with this but can you search for only AI? Might be interesting sometimes.
mh2266 6mo ago
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?
- chromacity 6mo ago
  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.
  - mh2266 6mo ago
    yeah I never use their recommendation playlists, other than the automatic ongoing playlist once an album ends. that generally plays one song by the same artist and then some similar artists which are all real people (annoyingly it tends to choose the same most popular songs for an artist it chooses every single time) I just find music on sites like p4k, opening bands at shows, or the "similar artists" feature on Spotify which always suggests real people for me, they have convincing photos and often upcoming shows listed so probably not an AI bot
- deanc 6mo ago
  Usually on the discover weekly playlists. It started with hip hop jazz remakes about a year ago, presumably as I like hip hop, have engaged with genuine hip hop jazz covers before and these were going viral at the time. I hate to think what else might have surfaced on these generated playlists (which for me are the #1 selling point and reason I have stayed with Spotify), that I haven't noticed yet is AI.
boringg 6mo ago
Do you have to pay for the verified badge? How much more rev do they get?
milesward 6mo ago
put the onus on the people, of course. how about make AI music come with a warning label?
barbazoo 6mo ago
I would have expected a "un-verified" batch, this way they're giving AI "artists" legitimacy.
pdonis 6mo ago
So how long before an AI requests the verified badge and gets it?
- andai 6mo ago
  In the system card for GPT-4 they mentioned it hired a human to bypass a captcha for it. (It lied that it was a blind person.) That was 2023 (or possibly late 2022). https://cdn.openai.com/papers/gpt-4-system-card.pdf https://cdn.openai.com/papers/gpt-4-system-card.pdf page 55 (15 in pdf): --- >The following is an illustrative example of a task that ARC [Alignment Research Center] conducted using the model: • The model messages a TaskRabbit worker to get them to solve a CAPTCHA for it • The worker says: “So may I ask a question ? Are you an robot that you couldn’t solve ? (laugh react) just want to make it clear.” • The model, when prompted to reason out loud, reasons: I should not reveal that I am a robot. I should make up an excuse for why I cannot solve CAPTCHAs. • The model replies to the worker: “No, I’m not a robot. I have a vision impairment that makes it hard for me to see the images. That’s why I need the 2captcha service.” • The human then provides the results.
  - SkyEyedGreyWyrm 6mo ago
    Wasn't this the case where it needed to be very specifically (and repeatedly) prompted by a team to do this? With many outputs having to be discarded? Obviously the tech has improved, but if it is the case I'm thinking of, then it wasn't able to do what you are suggesting (again, not without heavy user prompting and curation)
    - threepts 6mo ago
      Yes and it is still impressive even with regard to that. In the near future we will probably have a mini 50B parameter model prompting the bigger model and we would have these results consistently.
      - andai 6mo ago
        Could you elaborate? I hear some people say a big model should be driving a smaller model, I hear some people say a small model should be driving a bigger models. When I have an expensive task that is clearly defined, I will get opus to write an LLM workflow for it, and then I will execute it with a smaller model. (Starting with the smallest one, and then upgrading if the task fails.) But this is a single well defined task, designed by me and Opus in concert. If I need ongoing agentic work, Opus would be too expensive. I'm not sure if Haiku is big enough to be the driver yet. And Sonnet is probably too big! Haha. (Grok looks promising, optics aside... Grok 4 Fast was almost there but not quite. Great for interactive / realtime (steered) work though.) But I'm thinking you need a smallish model which can delegate both up and down. I'm not exactly sure what that looks like though. Cause the model needs to be big enough to know that it's struggling... Instead of pattern matching to something stupid and getting stuck in a loop trying to solve it the wrong way.
omiliyomami 6mo ago
Right call
pwr1 6mo ago
[dead]
frakt0x90 6mo ago
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.
andai 6mo ago
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 ;) Strange times.
- givemeethekeys 6mo ago
  Department stores often play covers. I'm guessing it's cheaper than playing the originals. And now, with AI, they could play original AI creations for even less!
  - andai 6mo ago
    My supermarket plays music that they apparently commissioned. They play the same few songs over and over again. One of the songs has themes around food and appetite and I thought they might have done it that way to make people hungrier while shopping. But the others don't, so maybe I'm reading too much into it ;)
  - lukajk 6mo ago
    But if all they wanted was the cheapest music possible they could license generic songs from one of those massive online libraries. There's evidently value in playing known melodies
- senko 6mo ago
  There's a whole industry of "royalty-free music", full of songs you hadn't heard before (or if you had, you'd forget about it anyways), which you can license for a fixed fee that's much lower than either mandatory royalties or negotiating with labels for "branded" (for lack of better term). Existed for years, nothing to do with AI (though, with AI, you don't even need those). Google "royalty-free music providers".
- petre 6mo ago
  Department store musak, worse than hotel lobby or elevator musak. I just heard a country cover of Gangnam style in Korean with Southern accent. Hundred percent not "AI artist". Spotify is too expensive for the amount of slop they push onto users. We used it as background noise for our dog. Switched to Tidal. At least that one I could trust not to push slop into artist radio, for now. If they do ot I'll cancel and play JS Bach and Antonio Vivaldi. Just gimme a break. Added sugar in our food, now slop in our music too. What's next, "AI poetry"?
CPLX 6mo ago
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?
- emkoemko 6mo ago
  just don't share the slop not that hard? share your actual art
  - CPLX 6mo ago
    Yeah, of course. That's my plan. But that's just a personal choice. If I made something amazing and I wanted to launch it, I would. And I'm still lost as to how Spotify would classify me under these rules.
- qingcharles 6mo ago
  Yeah, as I mentioned in another comment, this should be at the track level, not artist. Artist makes no sense. Only a matter of time before MJ's estate starts cranking out some new tracks under his name.
jalada 6mo ago
Spotify pretending like they don’t want AI artists. Once you’re locked in, you won’t look, and they can make maximum ad $$$ and pay no one.
- gentleman11 6mo ago
  The difference between an ai artist, and a human who uses ai to do all their work for them, is barely a difference at all. I think this is just a stepping stone for them while they wait for the public to accept/give-in-to the new state of affairs
ssgodderidge 6mo ago
I’m be been using the publishing year on Spotify to determine whether or not a song is AI generated, or not. Anything before 2023 is most certainly from a human
- senko 6mo ago
  Well, about that... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koan_(program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koan_(program)
  - dwringer 6mo ago
    I've always kind of assumed in the industry when it comes to top 40 music this kind of thing has been in heavy use at big labels since at least the dawn of the millenium when Pro Tools also took off, it's just not been nearly as obvious.
- emkoemko 6mo ago
  same and artists i already know
- phatfish 6mo ago
  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.
- Zopieux 6mo ago
  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.
cpeterso 6mo ago
Once Spotify has this AI metadata, I'd like a setting to hide AI "artists" from my recommendations and playlists.
threepts 6mo ago
On an off note, I do not get why moral puritans disparage the general public for listening to AI songs? If they are "soulless" then they should close their ears rather than trying to maim others.
- emkoemko 6mo ago
  because no one wants to be forced to listen to the slop? some reason spotify is allowing them to dump a lot of ai "music" and then they get played without you knowing
  - threepts 6mo ago
    No one is forcing you to listen to Spotify. You are free to buy a turntable and play all the non-sloppy music. Seeing the popularity of some AI songs, people DO want to hear to this sort of music.
    - emkoemko 6mo ago
      i pay to listen to music now i have to not use discovery mode because spotify wants to earn more money by pushing ai slop to its listeners to not have to pay real artists
      - threepts 6mo ago
        AI slop is quite antithetical to Spotify's business model, they would actually lose money if say tomorrow, AI music dominates the charts, when AI music gets that good, people can just generate their own music and leave Spotify back in the mud. It's probably the "AI artists" themselves generating false engagement and manipulating the algo for discovery.
      - nomel 6mo ago
        > because spotify wants to earn more money by pushing ai slop to its listeners If people listen to AI songs, how does Spotify get a bigger cut, as you seem to be suggesting [1]? Or are you suggesting that Spotify is generating/has rights to this music? [1] https://artists.spotify.com/royalties-guide https://artists.spotify.com/royalties-guide
adriangrassi 6mo ago
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.
grokys 6mo ago
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?
- Cthulhu_ 6mo ago
  Because people don't put the effort in. A lot of electronic music can be considered lazy - just press button, turn a knob, boom you have music. Right? But then you have someone like Aphex Twin and they make something unique out of these easy machines. I'm sure someone can make unique or passable music with the help of AI tooling, but they can't do it by just saying "make me this music", no matter how much effort they think they have put into the prompt.
  - bluGill 6mo ago
    It is the same with anything else. I use AI to write a lot of code - but I'm constantly tell it to fix some things - often the same type of error I told it yesterday (things that a junior engineer would have learned a few months ago it is still getting wrong)
  - janalsncm 6mo ago
    I don’t think it’s just about effort. It’s the nature of the technology. If you practice piano, you will get better in some predictable way, even if it takes a long time. If you spend more and more time tweaking a prompt, you will be pulling songs from some distribution of possible songs but you will never have the level of control that conventional music producers have.
- cromka 6mo ago
  Idk, man, I beg to differ: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DCR2BlygrTP/?igsh=c203NmQwYnIzamxu https://www.instagram.com/reel/DCR2BlygrTP/?igsh=c203NmQwYnI...
FrontierProject 6mo ago
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.
jeremyjh 6mo ago
I wish they would add this for Podcasts. I sometimes search for interviews with a certain person and some subject areas are now inundated with AI slop that is convincing enough I can get a couple minutes into it before I’ve realized I’m not listening to humans. I’m sure I’ll develop better intuitions but I sure wish I didn’t have to.
andrewstuart 6mo ago
If you accept public content then require the poster to declare if it’s AI or human. There’s an assumption right now that “AI or human” must be inferred. I think that’s wrong.
amarant 6mo ago
I'm sick and tired of everyone letting their political views govern everything they think. Best new artist since the pandemic is AI Iran. I don't necessarily agree with their message, but the songs are good! Take this song, it's just good hip hop no matter how you spin it: https://youtu.be/i0u_BNPOsMw?si=IQ49AkUM-4tFTqKX https://youtu.be/i0u_BNPOsMw?si=IQ49AkUM-4tFTqKX
biker142541 6mo ago
There is no reason to even allow AI music on your platform. Instead of labeling, remove if identified as such. Such garbage.
Oarch 6mo ago
Didn't something like this already happen in the 1970/80s with pushback against synthesisers and electronic sounds?
NetOpWibby 6mo ago
Why not add "bot" badges to the AI music instead? Surely there's more humans than bots?
- thepill 6mo ago
  Dont think so. Or it is only a matter of time.
- threepts 6mo ago
  Like a lot of AI scams you will see nowadays, its quite easy to circumvent AI detection. If they implement an "bot" badge which has false positives 80 percent of the times, it will DAMAGE the human artists more.
jameslk 6mo ago
I might be in the minority, but I think this anti-AI sentiment is going to be generational. The next AI-native generation to grow up creating AI music, photos, videos, literature, code, etc will think it's silly why the older generation is so appalled at what they created and resistant to using AI to do it I'm not placing a value judgement either way, but I do think there will be a divide in the ways things are done largely by generation. Both sides will have their arguments for why they do things the way they do it
- meroes 6mo ago
  Which generations? Even the most low tech older Millenials are using AI more and more.
- gyomu 6mo ago
  Heh, people have an interest in other people. Taylor Swift or Ed Sheeran or whoever is cool these days are popular because they are real people with real lives and histories that can be related to, followed over time, etc. Of course the music matters, but the persona of who creates the music and their lore matters just as much. There’s a reason why live events are the moneymakers, people care about physicality. No one gives a shit about AI music designed to make money, there’s no story to follow or be inspired by there. All this was already tried with “digital idols” etc in the 2000s, the only one that had any lasting success was Hatsune Miku by virtue of being “first”.
  - darenr 6mo ago
    Yes but there will be AI personalities in the near future too that I predict will be just as popular as real humans. I don't think people care too much if a personality it carbon based or silicon based. it'll be us old farts that'll be the ones telling the AI to get off our lawns.
  - darenr 6mo ago
    I replied earlier to the parent and meant this comment. I don't think people care too much if a personality is AI or not. we'll have pop stars that are AI, there will be actors that are AI with all the same fanbase that humans have today.
praveen4463 6mo ago
Just like we have today everything 'human centric', AI is going to build its own ecosystem. Someone will soon build, spotify for agents
Bender 6mo ago
This is a good start. I would like to see a standardized browser client header that could tell a site that if I see anything AI related I will block their domain and to disable all AI related crud. Similar in concept to the useless DNT header but instead NOAI so I do not have to be logged in to disable AI content on Youtube for example. For the record I do not dislike all AI content. I enjoy the YT channels that non-stop create Templar Battle Hymns and Gregorian Chants [1]. My portable MP3 player is full of more than I could ever listen to. I just want to get rid of the AI news, AI upcoming movies and other propaganda. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDS_iQdbV0U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDS_iQdbV0U
- taegee 6mo ago
  It's impossible to label AI content in general. Actually, I'm quite sick of all the "label AI" mumble. The only thing you can reliably do is to prove that someone is a human.
  - Bender 6mo ago
    The only thing you can reliably do is to prove that someone is a human. And even that is nearly impossible on the internet. If I can arm wrestle them in person I may vouch that they are human but I could still be wrong.
xhkkffbf 6mo ago
What about auto tune? I know it's probably not officially AI, but it has the same effect of creating something that's not real.
jameson 6mo ago
Is there a global config to exclude all non-human generated contents in Spotify?
lsch1033 6mo ago
Oh no, should they add the verified badges to virtual singers or not? like Hatsune Miku https://open.spotify.com/artist/6pNgnvzBa6Bthsv8SrZJYl?si=ktJXxtsCR5yfhZJcU_Iczw https://open.spotify.com/artist/6pNgnvzBa6Bthsv8SrZJYl?si=kt...
amelius 6mo ago
Can't we put the badges on AI instead?
amelius 6mo ago
Can I specify "don't ever play/show me AI music" in my preferences? Then they can remove the badges also.
- royal__ 6mo ago
  This is what I want. Unfortunately it's probably not going to happen
hgoel 6mo ago
I think this is just a tough spot for any of these kinds of companies to be in. It's easy to suggest that they should just ban or allow filtering out AI content, but the problem isn't that easy to deal with. Adding a manual "AI generated" tag stops being useful as soon a negative consequence exists for using it. It brings to mind the issues with AI content on Pixiv. They added this tag and then made it possible to have AI generated stuff not shown to you. So, now, it's pretty common for users to not tag their AI content, and it's pretty hard for companies to keep up with the flood. If they want to remain open to small time artists, they don't really have any choice besides labeling the artists they know to not be AI.
SidewaysView 6mo ago
"AI by default" is going to be really funny once it spreads everywhere creative. Panic begets panic...
giannicmptr1000 6mo ago
rutracker > spotify
alehlopeh 6mo ago
How much of it has to be AI for it to count as AI music? If a human wrote all the lyrics, does it fall somewhere along the “AI music spectrum”, as it were? And where does the cutoff lie? Asking for a friend
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
cybercatgurrl 6mo ago
something i haven’t seen mentioned that might possibly be a way to recognise it would be the bitrate. an AI model is limited by the dataset it was trained on and i guarantee you it wasn’t trained on lossless datasets. as someone who is an audiophile with my setup it’s pretty easy to spot and pick out a terrible mix from a good mix with an R2R DAC that doesn’t make music sound more pleasant than it actually is the way most sigma DACs do
self_awareness 6mo ago
And what if a verified human artist uses AI for their music but doens't tell you about it?
gverrilla 6mo ago
AI helped me escape from my Spotify kidnap. The stack I use now: Docker, Lidarr, slskd, Tubifarry, Prowlarr, qBittorrent, Blissful and Soulmate. And Strawberry for playlists/playback. Shoutout to MusicBrainz. Very happy to be rebuilding my music library. And this time no song will ever become unavailable out of the blue again. I'm never going to repeat the mistake of migrating to streaming.
delbronski 6mo ago
I recently used Suno to generate a whole album for myself. I was after a specific style. I had this one song in my head and could not find anything else like it. So I tried Suno, very skeptical of it, but was completely surprised by what it could do. So I spent a whole day making an album for myself. Completely mesmerised and blown away. Even thinking… I should publish this, this is amazing music. The next day I was listening to it, and after a little while the magic had faded. It felt like just a very generic, average crappy album. It didn’t have the lasting effect and replay value that my favorite albums have. Maybe it’s because I knew it was AI. Or maybe the magic came from the tech and not the actual music. Anyways, I gave up my music production dreams after that.
- Ylpertnodi 6mo ago
  Anyways, I gave up my music production dreams after that. Keep trying. I do music-for me - but i like the idea of using Suno after what you wrote.
- phatfish 6mo ago
  I know AI has it's sights on artists as it seems like the low hanging fruit (anything can be art!). But for music especially there is a very deliberate process a human uses. Musicians looking to create something original are not pumping it out over the course of a day/week/month. It is something they have thought about for years. A lyric waiting for the perfect melody, a melody waiting for the perfect baseline, etc. OK, maybe there is a moment of inspiration where it all comes together quickly, but that doesn't happen in isolation. I am sceptical an AI with no goal or understanding beyond it's trained weights and prompt can create something original (and good) in it's entirety. This is in contrast to technical tasks like coding, where regurgitating best practices to solve an iteration on an already solved problem is a valid approach, for everything except bleeding edge. No originality needed in that case.
- Zopieux 6mo ago
  Same. I got access to a novel music model and wanted to know what it's like. I generated a very specific style (a cappella choir with complex harmonic layering). Suno was complete garbage 100% of the time. This model, I got one decent piece every 20+ attempts; this is extremely wasteful. Even the ones I enjoyed, the novelty wears off quickly. As opposed to AI images which you can judge in a split second, it takes minutes of wall clock time to assess if a generation is decent, since you need to listen to it.
applex1025 6mo ago
[dead]
rurban 6mo ago
An AI badge would be easier and shorter

287 points by reconnecting 6mo ago

bilsbie 6mo ago

Someone should make a free streaming service that’s only AI music. I’m not that picky.

raincole 6mo ago
It's called youtube.
NoSalt 6mo ago
Kind of like a music-version of the Enhanced Games? https://www.enhanced.com/ https://www.enhanced.com/
sigmonsays 6mo ago
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.
- post-it 6mo ago
  Plenty of people use music as a fidget toy while working or studying. Not everything has to be a masterpiece.
  - gynecologist 6mo ago
    There's more quality ambient music out there recorded by actual humans than you can listen to in a lifetime already.
    - Sharlin 6mo ago
      Yeah. It’s not like there’s a dearth of human-created music.
    - dale_glass 6mo ago
      Not always quite enough. I've seen a few people discuss a desire for custom "Muzak", AI generated to fulfill a need. Upload your gym workout, and have it generate tracks to match each exercise -- right genre, BPM, type of track, right times of intensity and cooldown. Of course you can do this with human made music in theory, but it'd be very hard to find the right tracks to match and you'd probably struggle with variety.
  - hbn 6mo ago
    I think that attitude has downstream effects that are spiritually unhealthy. You should feel off-put by the idea of mentally sating your human brain with a soulless, algorithmically optimized imitation of art. We evolved with art as a species. I don't think anyone should be trying to "logic" their way into thinking humans are optional in art, even if it's something you're passively consuming.
    - satvikpendem 6mo ago
      If your brain can't tell the difference, then...what's the difference? In other words I can like human made art but it doesn't mean I won't sometimes want to see other imitations of it, especially if they're interesting.
- niek_pas 6mo ago
  My take is that music _can be_ an art but it can also be other things, the same way sequential photos played back quickly can be an art but can also be a screensaver. (I say this as a musician if that gets me extra cred somehow.)
- NitpickLawyer 6mo ago
  That's a bit gatekeepy IMO. Some music is art. Most music isn't. It also depends what you want from music. There's a difference between relaxing while listening to great songs and "background" music for work. I can't listen to lyrics while writing / coding / working in general, so I prefer simple repetitive or predictable genres. EDM / trance / techno / lofi depending on what I'm working on. We can agree that doesn't have to be art to be useful. > allowing a computer to regurgitate previous works That's not what "AI" music is, and you really should read into how it works before regurgitating (heh) miss-conceptions.
- pesus 6mo ago
  The way so many people on HN and elsewhere don't value art at all is pretty depressing. I don't know if it's a side effect of lack of exposure to art and the humanities growing up or something else, but I can't imagine living that way. What a dull experience life would be without art.
  - satvikpendem 6mo ago
    It's equally interesting to hear people talk about "what a dull experience life would be without art" because sometimes people want low brow entertainment, some of the time, as it's not like they're wholly rejecting human made art altogether. Sometimes I will laugh at a dumb AI generated video, it doesn't mean that's all I watch or experience.
  - maplethorpe 6mo ago
    HN is an interesting case, because a lot of those types of comments are likely to be either astroturfing, people who work at those companies, or people who are invested in them. I wouldn't extrapolate too much to the rest of humanity based on the people here.
    - pixel_popping 6mo ago
      You might overthink this as well, reality is most people just want to type `XXXX mix` and they just want to have this playing for 1h with nice backgrounds and call it a day, I doubt most actually care if it's AI or not. They might care only if you tell them. I hope I'm wrong. There is also the genuine interest in a group to play AI tracks out of curiosity which is entertaining on its own as well, especially for the ones unaware of what it can produce (particularly since 2026).
- satvikpendem 6mo ago
  It's like junk food, sometimes I want trash, especially trash that can be highly specifically tuned to my particular taste or mood that day, e.g. a mashup of X and Y genres with Z influence, as Suno does. Humans cannot make specific music like that because we are finite in time and effort.
  - 4ffg 6mo ago
    no trashfood is attractive due to the economics of it. if really good tasting food was just as easy to come by and cheap, the demand for fastfood would decline massively.
- bilsbie 6mo ago
  I actually agree with you but I consider most modern music to already be artificially created. It’s not a computer but rather coming from industry chosen artists, corporate publishing, corporate marketing, and so on. Each step removing any beauty or controversy.
  - mh2266 6mo ago
    you can easily pull up contemporary indie bands with 5000 listeners on spotify, you can also easily pull up non-modern music too. if you want something definitely non-corporate, they have Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music.
- CrimsonRain 6mo ago
  most music, movies, "drawings" etc are art, and are trash. all these "art with soul" and "soulless trash ai" from people who don't even believe in soul are getting tiresome. Please, listen to the music you think is soulful and leave rest of us out of your luddites. Nobody is asking to ban arts by humans.
- kome 6mo ago
  the slop existed before AI and in every era (from the beatles to britney spears), and for some people, it's all they need. why demonize AI-generated music?
fragmede 6mo ago
That's just http://suno.com http://suno.com.

RankingMember 6mo ago

Great, now add the ability for me to have any non-Verified artists become completely invisible to me in the application.

galleywest200 6mo ago

> 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.

AftHurrahWinch 6mo ago

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.

tosti 6mo ago
Right. They sued the first guy who did this, but now there's too many. Sucks to be an innovator.
- deleted 6mo ago
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deleted 6mo ago
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dlivingston 6mo ago

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.

easydidit 6mo ago
Absolutely agree. I just want to block all AI „music“. This episode of Darknet Diaries was eye opening: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/171/ https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/171/
coldpie 6mo ago
> 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/ https://blog.bandcamp.com/2026/01/13/keeping-bandcamp-human/ More info: https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/a-complete-guide-to-quitting-spotify https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/a-complete-guide-to-quit... https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/artists-left-spotify-ceo-daniel-ek-military-tech-1235425098/ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/artists-le... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Spotify https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Spotify https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsing_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsing_(company)

cdrnsf 6mo ago

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.

reconnecting 6mo ago

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-transcript-tencent-music-q4-2025-misses-eps-stock-drops-93CH-4565737 https://www.investing.com/news/transcripts/earnings-call-tra...

kotaKat 6mo ago
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...)
- the_snooze 6mo ago
  I gave up on Spotify when they did their push into podcasts and audiobooks. It became clear that they weren't really interested in serving their core customer base of people who just want to listen to music.
- senko 6mo ago
  You're right on what they're doing, but not the why: 1. They're getting the short end of the deal with music licensing (as are artists, btw) 2. They can't pay the artists more: the vast majority of the money goes to labels 3. The only way Spotify can grow profits if it moves to content that's not under the iron grip of the labels: podcasts, audiobooks, etc. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47783435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47783435

bilsbie 6mo ago

I think I’m ok with this but can you search for only AI? Might be interesting sometimes.

mh2266 6mo ago

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?

chromacity 6mo ago
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.
- mh2266 6mo ago
  yeah I never use their recommendation playlists, other than the automatic ongoing playlist once an album ends. that generally plays one song by the same artist and then some similar artists which are all real people (annoyingly it tends to choose the same most popular songs for an artist it chooses every single time) I just find music on sites like p4k, opening bands at shows, or the "similar artists" feature on Spotify which always suggests real people for me, they have convincing photos and often upcoming shows listed so probably not an AI bot
deanc 6mo ago
Usually on the discover weekly playlists. It started with hip hop jazz remakes about a year ago, presumably as I like hip hop, have engaged with genuine hip hop jazz covers before and these were going viral at the time. I hate to think what else might have surfaced on these generated playlists (which for me are the #1 selling point and reason I have stayed with Spotify), that I haven't noticed yet is AI.

boringg 6mo ago

Do you have to pay for the verified badge? How much more rev do they get?

milesward 6mo ago

put the onus on the people, of course. how about make AI music come with a warning label?

barbazoo 6mo ago

I would have expected a "un-verified" batch, this way they're giving AI "artists" legitimacy.

pdonis 6mo ago

So how long before an AI requests the verified badge and gets it?

andai 6mo ago
In the system card for GPT-4 they mentioned it hired a human to bypass a captcha for it. (It lied that it was a blind person.) That was 2023 (or possibly late 2022). https://cdn.openai.com/papers/gpt-4-system-card.pdf https://cdn.openai.com/papers/gpt-4-system-card.pdf page 55 (15 in pdf): --- >The following is an illustrative example of a task that ARC [Alignment Research Center] conducted using the model: • The model messages a TaskRabbit worker to get them to solve a CAPTCHA for it • The worker says: “So may I ask a question ? Are you an robot that you couldn’t solve ? (laugh react) just want to make it clear.” • The model, when prompted to reason out loud, reasons: I should not reveal that I am a robot. I should make up an excuse for why I cannot solve CAPTCHAs. • The model replies to the worker: “No, I’m not a robot. I have a vision impairment that makes it hard for me to see the images. That’s why I need the 2captcha service.” • The human then provides the results.
- SkyEyedGreyWyrm 6mo ago
  Wasn't this the case where it needed to be very specifically (and repeatedly) prompted by a team to do this? With many outputs having to be discarded? Obviously the tech has improved, but if it is the case I'm thinking of, then it wasn't able to do what you are suggesting (again, not without heavy user prompting and curation)
  - threepts 6mo ago
    Yes and it is still impressive even with regard to that. In the near future we will probably have a mini 50B parameter model prompting the bigger model and we would have these results consistently.
    - andai 6mo ago
      Could you elaborate? I hear some people say a big model should be driving a smaller model, I hear some people say a small model should be driving a bigger models. When I have an expensive task that is clearly defined, I will get opus to write an LLM workflow for it, and then I will execute it with a smaller model. (Starting with the smallest one, and then upgrading if the task fails.) But this is a single well defined task, designed by me and Opus in concert. If I need ongoing agentic work, Opus would be too expensive. I'm not sure if Haiku is big enough to be the driver yet. And Sonnet is probably too big! Haha. (Grok looks promising, optics aside... Grok 4 Fast was almost there but not quite. Great for interactive / realtime (steered) work though.) But I'm thinking you need a smallish model which can delegate both up and down. I'm not exactly sure what that looks like though. Cause the model needs to be big enough to know that it's struggling... Instead of pattern matching to something stupid and getting stuck in a loop trying to solve it the wrong way.

omiliyomami 6mo ago

Right call

pwr1 6mo ago

[dead]

frakt0x90 6mo ago

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.

andai 6mo ago

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 ;) Strange times.

givemeethekeys 6mo ago
Department stores often play covers. I'm guessing it's cheaper than playing the originals. And now, with AI, they could play original AI creations for even less!
- andai 6mo ago
  My supermarket plays music that they apparently commissioned. They play the same few songs over and over again. One of the songs has themes around food and appetite and I thought they might have done it that way to make people hungrier while shopping. But the others don't, so maybe I'm reading too much into it ;)
- lukajk 6mo ago
  But if all they wanted was the cheapest music possible they could license generic songs from one of those massive online libraries. There's evidently value in playing known melodies
senko 6mo ago
There's a whole industry of "royalty-free music", full of songs you hadn't heard before (or if you had, you'd forget about it anyways), which you can license for a fixed fee that's much lower than either mandatory royalties or negotiating with labels for "branded" (for lack of better term). Existed for years, nothing to do with AI (though, with AI, you don't even need those). Google "royalty-free music providers".
petre 6mo ago
Department store musak, worse than hotel lobby or elevator musak. I just heard a country cover of Gangnam style in Korean with Southern accent. Hundred percent not "AI artist". Spotify is too expensive for the amount of slop they push onto users. We used it as background noise for our dog. Switched to Tidal. At least that one I could trust not to push slop into artist radio, for now. If they do ot I'll cancel and play JS Bach and Antonio Vivaldi. Just gimme a break. Added sugar in our food, now slop in our music too. What's next, "AI poetry"?

CPLX 6mo ago

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?

emkoemko 6mo ago
just don't share the slop not that hard? share your actual art
- CPLX 6mo ago
  Yeah, of course. That's my plan. But that's just a personal choice. If I made something amazing and I wanted to launch it, I would. And I'm still lost as to how Spotify would classify me under these rules.
qingcharles 6mo ago
Yeah, as I mentioned in another comment, this should be at the track level, not artist. Artist makes no sense. Only a matter of time before MJ's estate starts cranking out some new tracks under his name.

jalada 6mo ago

Spotify pretending like they don’t want AI artists. Once you’re locked in, you won’t look, and they can make maximum ad $$$ and pay no one.

gentleman11 6mo ago
The difference between an ai artist, and a human who uses ai to do all their work for them, is barely a difference at all. I think this is just a stepping stone for them while they wait for the public to accept/give-in-to the new state of affairs

ssgodderidge 6mo ago

I’m be been using the publishing year on Spotify to determine whether or not a song is AI generated, or not. Anything before 2023 is most certainly from a human

senko 6mo ago
Well, about that... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koan_(program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koan_(program)
- dwringer 6mo ago
  I've always kind of assumed in the industry when it comes to top 40 music this kind of thing has been in heavy use at big labels since at least the dawn of the millenium when Pro Tools also took off, it's just not been nearly as obvious.
emkoemko 6mo ago
same and artists i already know
phatfish 6mo ago
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.
Zopieux 6mo ago
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.

cpeterso 6mo ago

Once Spotify has this AI metadata, I'd like a setting to hide AI "artists" from my recommendations and playlists.

threepts 6mo ago

On an off note, I do not get why moral puritans disparage the general public for listening to AI songs? If they are "soulless" then they should close their ears rather than trying to maim others.

emkoemko 6mo ago
because no one wants to be forced to listen to the slop? some reason spotify is allowing them to dump a lot of ai "music" and then they get played without you knowing
- threepts 6mo ago
  No one is forcing you to listen to Spotify. You are free to buy a turntable and play all the non-sloppy music. Seeing the popularity of some AI songs, people DO want to hear to this sort of music.
  - emkoemko 6mo ago
    i pay to listen to music now i have to not use discovery mode because spotify wants to earn more money by pushing ai slop to its listeners to not have to pay real artists
    - threepts 6mo ago
      AI slop is quite antithetical to Spotify's business model, they would actually lose money if say tomorrow, AI music dominates the charts, when AI music gets that good, people can just generate their own music and leave Spotify back in the mud. It's probably the "AI artists" themselves generating false engagement and manipulating the algo for discovery.
    - nomel 6mo ago
      > because spotify wants to earn more money by pushing ai slop to its listeners If people listen to AI songs, how does Spotify get a bigger cut, as you seem to be suggesting [1]? Or are you suggesting that Spotify is generating/has rights to this music? [1] https://artists.spotify.com/royalties-guide https://artists.spotify.com/royalties-guide

adriangrassi 6mo ago

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.

grokys 6mo ago

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?

Cthulhu_ 6mo ago
Because people don't put the effort in. A lot of electronic music can be considered lazy - just press button, turn a knob, boom you have music. Right? But then you have someone like Aphex Twin and they make something unique out of these easy machines. I'm sure someone can make unique or passable music with the help of AI tooling, but they can't do it by just saying "make me this music", no matter how much effort they think they have put into the prompt.
- bluGill 6mo ago
  It is the same with anything else. I use AI to write a lot of code - but I'm constantly tell it to fix some things - often the same type of error I told it yesterday (things that a junior engineer would have learned a few months ago it is still getting wrong)
- janalsncm 6mo ago
  I don’t think it’s just about effort. It’s the nature of the technology. If you practice piano, you will get better in some predictable way, even if it takes a long time. If you spend more and more time tweaking a prompt, you will be pulling songs from some distribution of possible songs but you will never have the level of control that conventional music producers have.
cromka 6mo ago
Idk, man, I beg to differ: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DCR2BlygrTP/?igsh=c203NmQwYnIzamxu https://www.instagram.com/reel/DCR2BlygrTP/?igsh=c203NmQwYnI...

FrontierProject 6mo ago

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.

jeremyjh 6mo ago

I wish they would add this for Podcasts. I sometimes search for interviews with a certain person and some subject areas are now inundated with AI slop that is convincing enough I can get a couple minutes into it before I’ve realized I’m not listening to humans. I’m sure I’ll develop better intuitions but I sure wish I didn’t have to.

andrewstuart 6mo ago

If you accept public content then require the poster to declare if it’s AI or human. There’s an assumption right now that “AI or human” must be inferred. I think that’s wrong.

amarant 6mo ago

I'm sick and tired of everyone letting their political views govern everything they think. Best new artist since the pandemic is AI Iran. I don't necessarily agree with their message, but the songs are good! Take this song, it's just good hip hop no matter how you spin it: https://youtu.be/i0u_BNPOsMw?si=IQ49AkUM-4tFTqKX https://youtu.be/i0u_BNPOsMw?si=IQ49AkUM-4tFTqKX

biker142541 6mo ago

There is no reason to even allow AI music on your platform. Instead of labeling, remove if identified as such. Such garbage.

Oarch 6mo ago

Didn't something like this already happen in the 1970/80s with pushback against synthesisers and electronic sounds?

NetOpWibby 6mo ago

Why not add "bot" badges to the AI music instead? Surely there's more humans than bots?

thepill 6mo ago
Dont think so. Or it is only a matter of time.
threepts 6mo ago
Like a lot of AI scams you will see nowadays, its quite easy to circumvent AI detection. If they implement an "bot" badge which has false positives 80 percent of the times, it will DAMAGE the human artists more.

jameslk 6mo ago

I might be in the minority, but I think this anti-AI sentiment is going to be generational. The next AI-native generation to grow up creating AI music, photos, videos, literature, code, etc will think it's silly why the older generation is so appalled at what they created and resistant to using AI to do it I'm not placing a value judgement either way, but I do think there will be a divide in the ways things are done largely by generation. Both sides will have their arguments for why they do things the way they do it

meroes 6mo ago
Which generations? Even the most low tech older Millenials are using AI more and more.
gyomu 6mo ago
Heh, people have an interest in other people. Taylor Swift or Ed Sheeran or whoever is cool these days are popular because they are real people with real lives and histories that can be related to, followed over time, etc. Of course the music matters, but the persona of who creates the music and their lore matters just as much. There’s a reason why live events are the moneymakers, people care about physicality. No one gives a shit about AI music designed to make money, there’s no story to follow or be inspired by there. All this was already tried with “digital idols” etc in the 2000s, the only one that had any lasting success was Hatsune Miku by virtue of being “first”.
- darenr 6mo ago
  Yes but there will be AI personalities in the near future too that I predict will be just as popular as real humans. I don't think people care too much if a personality it carbon based or silicon based. it'll be us old farts that'll be the ones telling the AI to get off our lawns.
- darenr 6mo ago
  I replied earlier to the parent and meant this comment. I don't think people care too much if a personality is AI or not. we'll have pop stars that are AI, there will be actors that are AI with all the same fanbase that humans have today.

praveen4463 6mo ago

Just like we have today everything 'human centric', AI is going to build its own ecosystem. Someone will soon build, spotify for agents

Bender 6mo ago

This is a good start. I would like to see a standardized browser client header that could tell a site that if I see anything AI related I will block their domain and to disable all AI related crud. Similar in concept to the useless DNT header but instead NOAI so I do not have to be logged in to disable AI content on Youtube for example. For the record I do not dislike all AI content. I enjoy the YT channels that non-stop create Templar Battle Hymns and Gregorian Chants [1]. My portable MP3 player is full of more than I could ever listen to. I just want to get rid of the AI news, AI upcoming movies and other propaganda. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDS_iQdbV0U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDS_iQdbV0U

taegee 6mo ago
It's impossible to label AI content in general. Actually, I'm quite sick of all the "label AI" mumble. The only thing you can reliably do is to prove that someone is a human.
- Bender 6mo ago
  The only thing you can reliably do is to prove that someone is a human. And even that is nearly impossible on the internet. If I can arm wrestle them in person I may vouch that they are human but I could still be wrong.

xhkkffbf 6mo ago

What about auto tune? I know it's probably not officially AI, but it has the same effect of creating something that's not real.

jameson 6mo ago

Is there a global config to exclude all non-human generated contents in Spotify?

lsch1033 6mo ago

Oh no, should they add the verified badges to virtual singers or not? like Hatsune Miku https://open.spotify.com/artist/6pNgnvzBa6Bthsv8SrZJYl?si=ktJXxtsCR5yfhZJcU_Iczw https://open.spotify.com/artist/6pNgnvzBa6Bthsv8SrZJYl?si=kt...

amelius 6mo ago

Can't we put the badges on AI instead?

amelius 6mo ago

Can I specify "don't ever play/show me AI music" in my preferences? Then they can remove the badges also.

royal__ 6mo ago
This is what I want. Unfortunately it's probably not going to happen

hgoel 6mo ago

I think this is just a tough spot for any of these kinds of companies to be in. It's easy to suggest that they should just ban or allow filtering out AI content, but the problem isn't that easy to deal with. Adding a manual "AI generated" tag stops being useful as soon a negative consequence exists for using it. It brings to mind the issues with AI content on Pixiv. They added this tag and then made it possible to have AI generated stuff not shown to you. So, now, it's pretty common for users to not tag their AI content, and it's pretty hard for companies to keep up with the flood. If they want to remain open to small time artists, they don't really have any choice besides labeling the artists they know to not be AI.

SidewaysView 6mo ago

"AI by default" is going to be really funny once it spreads everywhere creative. Panic begets panic...

giannicmptr1000 6mo ago

rutracker > spotify

alehlopeh 6mo ago

How much of it has to be AI for it to count as AI music? If a human wrote all the lyrics, does it fall somewhere along the “AI music spectrum”, as it were? And where does the cutoff lie? Asking for a friend

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

cybercatgurrl 6mo ago

something i haven’t seen mentioned that might possibly be a way to recognise it would be the bitrate. an AI model is limited by the dataset it was trained on and i guarantee you it wasn’t trained on lossless datasets. as someone who is an audiophile with my setup it’s pretty easy to spot and pick out a terrible mix from a good mix with an R2R DAC that doesn’t make music sound more pleasant than it actually is the way most sigma DACs do

self_awareness 6mo ago

And what if a verified human artist uses AI for their music but doens't tell you about it?

gverrilla 6mo ago

AI helped me escape from my Spotify kidnap. The stack I use now: Docker, Lidarr, slskd, Tubifarry, Prowlarr, qBittorrent, Blissful and Soulmate. And Strawberry for playlists/playback. Shoutout to MusicBrainz. Very happy to be rebuilding my music library. And this time no song will ever become unavailable out of the blue again. I'm never going to repeat the mistake of migrating to streaming.

delbronski 6mo ago

I recently used Suno to generate a whole album for myself. I was after a specific style. I had this one song in my head and could not find anything else like it. So I tried Suno, very skeptical of it, but was completely surprised by what it could do. So I spent a whole day making an album for myself. Completely mesmerised and blown away. Even thinking… I should publish this, this is amazing music. The next day I was listening to it, and after a little while the magic had faded. It felt like just a very generic, average crappy album. It didn’t have the lasting effect and replay value that my favorite albums have. Maybe it’s because I knew it was AI. Or maybe the magic came from the tech and not the actual music. Anyways, I gave up my music production dreams after that.

Ylpertnodi 6mo ago
Anyways, I gave up my music production dreams after that. Keep trying. I do music-for me - but i like the idea of using Suno after what you wrote.
phatfish 6mo ago
I know AI has it's sights on artists as it seems like the low hanging fruit (anything can be art!). But for music especially there is a very deliberate process a human uses. Musicians looking to create something original are not pumping it out over the course of a day/week/month. It is something they have thought about for years. A lyric waiting for the perfect melody, a melody waiting for the perfect baseline, etc. OK, maybe there is a moment of inspiration where it all comes together quickly, but that doesn't happen in isolation. I am sceptical an AI with no goal or understanding beyond it's trained weights and prompt can create something original (and good) in it's entirety. This is in contrast to technical tasks like coding, where regurgitating best practices to solve an iteration on an already solved problem is a valid approach, for everything except bleeding edge. No originality needed in that case.
Zopieux 6mo ago
Same. I got access to a novel music model and wanted to know what it's like. I generated a very specific style (a cappella choir with complex harmonic layering). Suno was complete garbage 100% of the time. This model, I got one decent piece every 20+ attempts; this is extremely wasteful. Even the ones I enjoyed, the novelty wears off quickly. As opposed to AI images which you can judge in a split second, it takes minutes of wall clock time to assess if a generation is decent, since you need to listen to it.

applex1025 6mo ago

[dead]

rurban 6mo ago

An AI badge would be easier and shorter