Spotify removes tens of thousands of AI-generated songs

Haro on songs created by robots. Spotify just deleted tens of thousands of music tracks generated by artificial intelligence.

The streaming giant thus withdrew around 7% of the titles that had been ed by Boomy, a start-up for creating music, according to the Financial Times or the equivalent of tens of thousands of songs.

The music industry is increasingly faced with the rise of AI-generated songs. Many automated composition tools are available online to the general public, And, the threat of AI has also been widely highlighted in a recent report by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (Ifpi).

According to the British daily, it was Universal Music who pointed the finger at suspicious activity on Boomy. Launched two years ago, Boomy allows you to create music in a few minutes, from certain sounds and atmospheres, by modifying the tempo, by adding lyrics, etc. These can then be uploaded to streaming platforms and generate revenue. The California-based company says its users have created more than 14 million songs. Boomy is in discussion with Spotify on its catalog.

Artificial streaming

The FT explains that Boomy’s songs were taken down due to a suspicion of “artificial streaming”: online robots posing as human listeners in order to inflate the audience.

In France, according to a study by the National Music Center platforms such as Deezer, Spotify and Qobuz would have between 1% and 3% of streams considered fraudulent in 2021.

“It is a real scourge. Since Spotify has sought to open up to everyone, for and not only to the majors, it has been confronted with individuals who use bots to inflate the audience of songs that have nothing artistic about them”, underlines Alice Enders, from Enders Analysis. According to her, there are more and more 30-second clips on the platform, no doubt generated by AI. The share of streams from majors and independent labels has thus increased from 85% in 2018 to 75% in 2022.

In this remaining quarter, “there are certainly amateur musicians, who use bots to climb and get noticed by record companies, but also more and more scammers who seek to siphon off the income of genuine creators”, she says.

The subject of AI has become a growing cause for concern, raising both issues relating to copyright, but also to the reliability of data on real listening, and indeed the remuneration of the music ecosystem.

Lucian Grainge, General Manager of Universal Music has recently denounced the proliferation of songs and the risks of manipulation on platforms such as Spotify, when more than 100,000 songs are added to the latter every day. He told investors that “the recent explosive development of generative artificial intelligence, if left unchecked, will increase the flow of unwanted content onto platforms and create rights issues under existing legislation. matters of copyright”.

David Guetta, Drake etc.

According to the FT, Universal sent a letter to streaming companies asking them to down on the use of generative AI on their platforms in April.

Around the same time, a song using artificial intelligence to mimic the vocals of Drake and The Weeknd went viral on streaming platforms, sparking the ire of UMG. David Guetta himself used two online services to write lyrics in the style of Eminem, then recreate the voice of the rapper singing these few words, before broadcasting the extract in concert – which will not be marketed.

Daniel Ek, the director of Spotify cannot deny this problem . “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it in technology,” he told analysts, of how quickly AI technology is advancing.

“This necessarily enters into the negotiations between the group and the majors, adds analyst Alice Enders. They could push Spotify for more content moderation.”

Contacted, Universal Music and Spotify declined to comment further.