Spotify Embraces AI Music with New Guidelines

Spotify has announced comprehensive new policies regarding AI-generated music on its platform, marking a significant shift in how the streaming giant approaches the growing presence of AI content.

Rather than implementing an outright ban, the company is embracing properly labelled AI music while simultaneously launching an aggressive campaign against low-quality spam content (as per Rolling Stone).

The streaming service revealed it has removed more than 75 million “spammy” AI tracks over the past 12 months alone, highlighting the scale of the challenge facing the platform.

Charlie Hellman, Spotify’s VP global head of music product, emphasised the company’s balanced approach: “We’re not here to punish artists for using AI authentically and responsibly. We hope that artists’ use of AI production tools will enable them to be more creative than ever.”

Spotify’s primary concern centres on combating “mass uploads, duplicates, SEO hacks, artificially short track abuse, and other forms of slop,” according to the company’s official blog post. To address these issues, the platform is implementing a new spam filter designed to identify uploaders engaging in these practices, thereby protecting royalty distributions that would otherwise flow to professional artists and songwriters.

The new framework treats AI usage as “a spectrum, not a binary,” explained Sam Duboff, Spotify’s global head of marketing and policy for music business. The platform will encourage artists to label their AI usage through a new industry standard developed by DDEX, a non-profit organisation that creates technical standards for song metadata across platforms. This labelling system will allow artists to specify their precise uses of generative AI, ranging from completely prompt-generated songs to human-made tracks with AI-enhanced lyrics.

However, these labelling requirements remain voluntary rather than mandatory. Artists who fail to properly identify their AI-generated content won’t face removal from the platform, but their tracks will become ineligible for algorithmic recommendation by Spotify’s systems.

The policies include explicit bans on unauthorised AI voice clones and deepfakes, with Duboff stating: “Some artists may choose to license their voice to AI projects — and that’s their choice to make. Our job is to do what we can to ensure that the choice stays in their hands.”