Spotify removes 50 million slop tracks from its platform

“Earlier this year, we looked closely at the tracks listeners were skipping, ignoring, or telling us they didn’t want to hear,” the company wrote. “A clear pattern emerged: These tracks were consistently ones identified as slop or spam. Over the past six months, we’ve made numerous updates to our recommendation system to remove slop and spam, and surface more music made by authentic, human artists. Our editors hold the same standard and don’t program content identified as slop or spam. Since we made these changes, we’ve seen a marked decrease in listener concerns about this content showing up in recommendations.”

Spotify went on to itemize how it’s continuing to handle AI on its platform, including an update to its royalty system that keeps low-effort AI tracks from siphoning money from “from real artists” who generate “music at scale.” There’s the “AI Credits” tool it launched in April, which lets users disclose their gen-AI usage when posting new tracks (seems a bit naive, but sure). There’s also the new “AI Persona” label, which listeners can see when an “artist” they’re listening to is itself AI-generated—instead of, y’know, not letting such entities post on the platform. “Spotify is currently the only major streaming service that labels when an artist’s identity is believed to be AI-generated,” it declared. Spotify also reminded listeners of its “Artist Profile Protection” feature, which human artists can use to review who or what lists their name on all the tracks that are uploaded on it. “This work isn’t finished,” Spotify concluded. “AI moves fast, and bad actors adapt just as fast. But as AI makes music more abundant, we believe listeners will value human artistry even more. Our job is to make Spotify the place they find it.”