Spotify Removes 50 Million AI Spam Tracks From Recommendations

Spotify has removed more than 50 million AI slop and spam tracks from recommendations this year, on top of the 75 million spammy tracks it has removed from the platform for serious or repeated violations of its rules.

One-year update:

• Spotify released the figures in a one-year update on its efforts to protect artists and listeners from spam, impersonation, and deception in the age of AI.

• Over the past six months, the streamer has updated its recommendation system to remove slop and spam and surface music made by authentic, human artists.

• Its editors follow the same standard and don’t program content identified as slop or spam.

• Spotify says it uses a combination of listener engagement and feedback, upload patterns, metadata, and information from third-party AI detection tools to identify slop and spam.

• It says it also hunts for new tactics such as mass uploads, duplicates, SEO manipulation, spammy playlist networks, and artificially short tracks.

Other AI protections:

• Spotify highlighted the tools it’s built to protect artists and give listeners more context about the music they hear.

• After launching AI Credits in April, the streamer claims artists are now submitting tens of thousands of credits daily showing which roles and instruments were made with AI. Listeners can view this information in Song Credits within the Now Playing view on mobile.

• More than 300,000 artists – who represent more than 99% of what listeners search for on the platform – are Verified by Spotify. More than 70% of verified artists are independent.

• Thousands of AI Personas are now labeled and excluded from editorial or algorithmic recommendations by default.

• Thousands of artists opted in to the Artist Profile Protection beta, giving them the ability to review releases that list them as an artist when they’re delivered to Spotify. The company plans to make the tool available to all artists by the end of the year.

• Spotify says its 1,000-stream royalty threshold, introduced in 2024, is helping protect human artists from AI-generated music at scale, as tracks showing a high probability of being AI-generated are 10 times more likely to fall below the threshold.