Spotify has removed more than 75 million tracks as it faces mounting pressure from a vast wave of artificial intelligence-generated music flooding streaming platforms.
As tools from AI companies make it easier to produce fake songs, platforms such as Spotify are being pushed harder than ever, along with the payment systems they use to reward real artists. The impact is already being felt in Australia, where a suspected AI-generated track has reached the top of the charts and musicians say they are being forced to share performance spaces with AI-assisted acts.
Sam Duboff, Spotify’s key executive overseeing global artists, marketing and policy, said 100,000 songs were being uploaded to the platform every day and a growing share of them were created with AI.
During a visit to Australia this week for discussions with artists, record labels and policymakers about AI’s effect on music, Mr Duboff said Spotify had assembled a dedicated team to identify AI-generated material.
“That’s the low-effort content you see where it’s mass-produced, it’s mass uploaded, it’s AI slop … we’ve removed over 75 million spammy tracks in the last year,” he said.
“AI hasn’t really introduced any novel spam tactics. It’s just taken existing spam tactics and taken them to a new level.”
He said the issue was especially difficult because the boundaries around AI use in music were not always clear.
Spotify is being squeezed from multiple directions. Established artists are increasingly using AI during recording, everyday creators are finding viral success on TikTok and Instagram with AI-driven remixes, and deepfakers are pumping out cloned bands and imitation vocals.
At the same time, AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic continue to scrape online data at scale to train their models.
“We have built lots of systems to try to make scraping as difficult as possible,” Mr Duboff said.
“We certainly have a big team trying to look at any sort of attack vector that might be coming in. So, you know, we do our best to protect all the music that people trust us with.”
Mr Duboff’s trip to Australia came as Anthony Albanese announced a major government response to the rise of AI, revealing plans to establish an Office of Artificial Intelligence.
The new office, to sit within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, was presented by the Prime Minister in a speech in Sydney on Wednesday as a world-leading approach to AI regulation and oversight.
“Getting this right will enhance our appeal to international investors by delivering greater clarity and speed for approvals and a streamlined process for verifying compliance,” Mr Albanese said.
“It also imposes an important discipline on government.
“AI touches on the work of every minister and department, so it is only natural that, up until now, our response has been issue by issue, sector by sector.”
The plan was welcomed by the Australian Recording Industry Association, whose chief executive Annabelle Herd said it sent a strong signal to technology firms.
“The Prime Minister could not have been clearer: Australian writers and musicians keep ownership and control of their work,” she said.
“Artists control what that work is worth, not the government and not a technology company.
“Control of price, value and terms of use are what underpin a commercial licensing market. The artist decides what their work is worth and who may use it.
“That is how licensing works everywhere else in the world and it is how it should work here. In the Prime Minister’s words: anything less is theft.”
Her comments came just two weeks after some of Australia’s best-known creatives, including singer-songwriter Jack River, urged Labor to hold the line on promises not to alter copyright laws. The group also called on AI companies to strike licensing deals.
“This is a clear message to AI companies: now is the time to get on with licensing,” Ms Herd said.
“Right now deals are being signed across music, journalism and publishing around the world.
“Australia’s creative industries are ready to do business.”
The debate is unfolding as major music industry bodies push a new labelling framework for generative AI content. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and the Recording Industry Association of America announced the voluntary labels alongside six other organisations, including the Grammys.
“Fans want to know whether and how generative AI has been used,” the chief executives of IFPI and RIAA said in a prepared statement.
“These labels will provide an immediately understandable and easily scalable approach to transparency.”
Under the proposal, one label would mark recordings as “AI-generated” when artificial intelligence “was used to generate the entirety or the primary portion of the creative elements of the recording”. That includes songs created “entirely” from AI prompts, as well as recordings featuring AI-generated lead vocals or “key” instrumental tracks.
A second label would apply to “AI-assisted” recordings that are still “created substantially by humans and expresses human creativity” but include “some expressive elements” generated with AI. For that category, humans must perform the lead vocals and primary instrumental tracks. The system is intended for “broad, global adoption,” including on streaming platforms.
Other companies are already moving in that direction. Deezer systematically flags tracks made with AI and recently said such material accounts for close to half of all new uploads. In June, the service introduced an “AI music detector” it said is 99.8 per cent accurate.
Earlier this year, an Apple Music executive told Billboard that more than one third of new uploads were entirely created with AI.
The Digital Media Association, which represents streaming platforms including Apple Music, Amazon and Spotify, said it was watching the labelling plan closely and wanted more detailed and accurate AI metadata to “strengthen our ability to give fans the transparency they deserve”.
“DIMA has long advocated for the creators, owners, and distributors of music to provide accurate and timely metadata on all music released and distributed to streaming services,” the association’s CEO Graham Davies said in a statement.
In April, Spotify introduced a “Verified by Spotify” label aimed at showing users they can “trust the authenticity” of an artist. Last year, the company also announced further efforts to support AI disclosure and fight impersonation.
