It’s not news that Spotify is invested in all things AI given its slew of algorithm-based music-discovery tools, from Discover Weekly to Daylists that are updated five or six times a day.
While it’s worked hard to secure its place as one of the best music streaming services, it seems to have gotten carried away with AI music recommendations – and now it’s infiltrating users’ Discover Weekly playlists.
Paying Spotify subscribers have been flagging the platform’s push of AI music for a while, but now they’re drawing a line, with many calling on the streaming giant to roll out filters to identify which songs have been generated by AI.
While I haven’t experienced this in my own Spotify Premium account, many users are using Reddit as a place to air their frustration in posts like the one below, which has garnered a slew of responses from similarly frustrated users.
Spotify really needs an AI filter already. from r/truespotify
Discover Weekly catches the AI plague
A common complaint is the overhaul of AI-generated music in users’ Discover Weekly playlists, which updates every Monday to recommend new artists from your most-streamed genres. Users have been reporting on this for quite some time, but are noticing that it’s only getting worse, and AI music is becoming more of an occurrence in Discover Weekly, as well as Release Radar playlists.
I’ve been one of the lucky ones and haven’t been subjected to the creeping AI plague, and I’d like it to stay that way. I discover a lot of music by listening to the radio, and I add lots of the songs I hear to my playlists, and as a result my Discover Weekly has stayed clean of anything remotely AI-generated. Plus, I enjoy creating playlists from scratch, which is another big help with avoiding the issue.
However, the problem doesn’t lie solely with AI music itself. What’s annoying users the most is what users frame as deception on Spotify’s part, claiming it’s not being transparent with its paying members, while platforms such as Deezer have systems that can identify and visibly label AI-generated music.
So where are all these AI-generated artists coming from? Well, some users are convinced that it’s an intentional move from Spotify.
Coincidence, or secret business strategy?
Spotify doesn’t have the best reputation for paying its artists, and as more users are running into unwanted AI music, there’s more cause for them to believe that Spotify is doing this deliberately in order to further avoid paying artists. It’s become too much of an occurrence to the point where it no longer looks coincidental.
The more Spotify pushes AI music, the fewer ‘real artists’ it has to worry about paying, resulting in higher profits for the streamer, but at what cost? It only eradicates artistic integrity and legitimate talent.
Will Spotify follow in the steps of Deezer and flag AI-generated music? Fat chance. However, as many have pointed out in the Reddit thread, Spotify is now the biggest music-streaming service user-wise, and because of its influence on the industry there’s more for it to lose – and now that it’s losing heaps of trust from its existing customers, it needs to do some rethinking.
I’ve reached out to Spotify for comment, and I’ll update this story if and when I receive a response.
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rowan.davies@futurenet.com (Rowan Davies)
