Spotify has removed thousands of AI-generated songs. However, the reason has not been because of the way they were created.
This measure by Spotify comes as a consequence of one of the major problems facing the platform regarding the fraudulent use of bots to obtain more royalties. We tell you the details.
The AI-generated music debate
Everyone was amazed at the potential of AI to generate music when a song that seemed to include vocals from Drake and The Weeknd went viral, and other similar dynamics began to be replicated. However, this opened up the debate.
While some artists expressed their support for the use of AI to generate music, record companies such as Universal Music Group made it clear that this was “a violation of copyright law.” So streaming music platforms like Spotify removed the song “Heart On My Sleeve” after getting thousands of streams in just a few days.
However, Universal Music Group continues to closely monitor any activity related to AI-generated music, as can be seen in Spotify’s latest decision.
Spotify deletes thousands of songs created with AI
As mentioned in a Financial Times report, Spotify made the decision to remove thousands of songs created by AI. However, that headline has a lot of background to analyze to understand the real reason for this decision.
Spotify’s “purge” does not include all songs created with artificial intelligence, but affects a percentage of songs that were created with Boomy. Let’s remember that it is a tool that uses the potential of AI to create music.
If you take a look at its platform, you will see that it mentions that users have already created more than 14,500,000 songs, which represents almost 14% of the music shared in the world. And of course, thousands of these songs are uploaded to Spotify in order to monetize them.
However, the problem on Spotify is that bots have been used to “boost” the number of plays these songs have had in order to earn more money. That is, the number of listeners and reproductions were inflated so that Spotify will pay more royalties for the songs.
A fraud that was warned by Universal Music, since it reported suspicious activity in some songs generated with Boomy. The Spotify team investigated the matter, which resulted in the removal of approximately 7% of all Boomy-created songs uploaded to the platform.
And while this decision has had a lot of impact, it’s not a new issue, as a Spotify spokesperson tells Insider :
Artificial streaming is a long-standing, industry-wide issue that Spotify is working to eliminate across our service. When we identify or are alerted to potential instances of stream tampering, we mitigate its impact by taking steps that may include removing stream numbers and withholding royalties.
It seems that Spotify has yet to find an effective way to remove this activity from its platform, so we may see more of these “purges” in the future, as the debate over the use of AI in creating content deepens.
