Spotify, one of the world's largest music streaming platforms, has declared war on AI-generated music. The company is taking significant steps to remove these tracks from its recommendation lists to protect the position of human creators and prevent distortion of its revenue structure.
On October 21, U.S. media outlets, including NBC, reported that Spotify has removed over 50 million tracks believed to be generated by AI from its recommendation algorithms this year. Last year, the platform also deleted 75 million tracks for violating rules against unauthorized content reproduction and artificial generation.
In a statement, Spotify described AI-generated music as "slop and spam," asserting that "it no longer deserves a place on our platform."
With millions of new tracks released daily, Spotify has implemented a method of 'user behavior analysis' to filter out impersonation and deceptive practices.
The company has tracked patterns of songs that users consistently skip or ignore over the past six months. The analysis revealed that many of these neglected tracks matched the characteristics of low-quality AI-generated music.
By combining user feedback with metadata analysis and third-party AI detection tools, Spotify has updated its recommendation system. This has significantly reduced the frequency of exposure to low-quality AI tracks. However, Spotify acknowledged that as generative AI technology evolves, identifying suspicious tracks is becoming increasingly complex, highlighting the limitations of current detection methods and the ongoing challenges in addressing this issue.
Spotify's proactive stance against AI-generated music is rooted in the need to protect creator royalties. The platform's payment structure allocates royalties based on the proportion of streams an artist receives out of the total.
Morgan Hayduk, CEO of the global music fraud and AI detection firm Beatdapp, pointed out that if low-quality AI tracks artificially inflate the total number of streams, the share of royalties going to legitimate human artists will inevitably decrease.
Currently, artists must achieve a minimum of 1,000 streams to receive royalties from Spotify, but most AI-generated tracks fall short of this threshold, leading to a dilution of the overall revenue pool.
However, Spotify is not entirely dismissing AI technology. The company is also pursuing a 'transparency policy' to coexist with artists who legitimately use AI in their creative processes.
Earlier this year, Spotify introduced an 'AI credit' feature that allows artists to specify when AI technology was used in the creation of their songs. Additionally, accounts classified as 'AI Persona,' which are entirely AI-generated, receive a badge. Music from these accounts is generally excluded from recommendation algorithms unless users specifically choose to follow them.
Following these multifaceted measures, Spotify reported a "significant decrease" in user complaints and reports regarding AI spam music.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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