Spotify Excluding AI Generated Music From Algorithmic Playlists

This is the biggest AI music policy change since AI music was created. Starting in mid-September, Spotify will start automatically detecting and labeling AI Personas on the platform, and excluding their music from editorial and algorithmic playlists.

If you didn’t gasp from that last sentence, let me say it again… AI Personas will be excluded from algorithmic playlists by default.

One of the main reasons AI music has been flooding streaming platforms, is because algorithmic playlists can amplify the music dramatically. People would flood hundreds or thousands of tracks onto the platform, promote them at scale, and watch Spotify’s algorithm push them out even further.

This, paired with Suno’s new download limits, effectively kills most of the purely money extracting AI music schemes.

But there is some nuance to this.

What is an AI Persona

Spotify is defining an AI Persona as an AI generated public identity. It doesn’t mean that all AI generated music is going to be flagged as an AI Persona.

In fact, it sounds like if someone uploaded human created music but they’re hiding behind an AI generated identity and visuals, they’d be marked as an AI Persona.

On that same note if someone is uploading AI generated music under their real name and face, they will not be flagged as an AI Persona.

In my opinion this is actually a good distinction. There are people out there making AI music in interesting ways, combining their own compositions with AI tools, and they’re proudly sharing their process with the world. This music isn’t the problem, these people are generally actually making art.

So this change allows those people to keep going while severely throttling people uploading piles of AI slop under dozens or hundreds of fake names.

More details

Artists are able to self disclose themselves as an AI Persona starting today. Eventually when the badges roll out, listeners will be able to see if the artist self identified or if the platform had to label them. Meaning the users will know if the artist was trying to manipulate them.

There will be an appeals process for those who get false flagged, and there will also be a way for listeners to report artists as being an AI Persona.

My opinion

In my opinion this is a fantastic update, basically the best possible solution we could have hoped for.

AI artists get to exist on the platform, people doing actual art with AI are largely unaffected, human artists have a much more level playing field.

The only way you can really be mad at this update, is if you were only making AI music to make money. And even in that case, there still are ways to make money with AI music, they just don’t involve flooding the platform with music and diluting algorithmic playlists.