Spotify Just Killed AI Generated Music

Spotify just rolled out a brand new update for how they're going to be treating AI generated music on the platform and I'm just going to jump straight into it. So, they're rolling out this new thing called AI personas where, starting today, they're going to allow artists inside of Spotify for artists to decide and manually claim if they are an AI persona or not. So, you can go in and you can manually say that the project is an AI persona. But, they're not only relying on manual disclosure, they're also going to be automatically tagging AI generated artists. So, if you upload AI generated music to the platform, they're going to just manually tag you or rather automatically tag you and label you as an AI persona. Um and as you might be worried about if you're if you're human artist and not an AI artist, if you are false flagged, they do have an appeal system to dispute the process. So, this was one big worry about them just flagging anything they think is AI generated in the first place is that there's not going to be any customer support or appeals process, but they did actually put an appeals process in this. And uh this is what it looks like. So, it's not live yet. I have like a pre-rollout thing that I'm filming ahead of time, but um this is what it's going to look like in the app. So, there's going to be run thing right in under the name of the artist as AI persona. When you search for the artist name in the search field, it's going to say AI persona next to the name. When you see the song, it says AI persona. When you scroll down into the um credit system, it says AI persona. When you look at the artist badges, it says AI persona. So, basically, like everywhere you look in the app with the exception of like this little tiny player down here, uh it's labeled as AI persona. So, essentially, everywhere across the app, you'll be able to see if a song or rather an artist that has a song is an AI persona or not. And that's only part of the change. This This is the change, but the biggest part of this is that if you're labeled as an AI persona, you are now ineligible from editorial playlists, and you're also ineligible from algorithmic playlists. Which this one, um if you're not gasping, you don't understand what I just said. Because this has been the the largest problem with AI music on Spotify in particular. Spotify is known for having this great algorithm that can push your music out and multiply it much further than your advertising can possibly do alone. So, what happens is you mark your music, you trigger the algorithm, and your song gets pushed out way further than it was from that alone. But, AI-generated artists have been able to do this scale and have dozens or hundreds of artists and spend money on all of them and get them all going in the algorithm, and a lot of users have been complaining that their radio algorithmic listeners and their Discover Weekly in some cases even mostly AI-generated music. So, essentially, all of that music, if it if it's flagged as an AI persona, it is ineligible for any algorithmic coverage on the platform. Which getting AI-generated music that they don't want. Two, it solves that music siphoning money away from the royalty pool. Three, it solves independent independent artists not getting pushed out algorithmically because they're getting pushed out by by AI personas who are getting into the algorithmic playlists. Um it also makes it harder to kind of mass game the system. Which is huge. Now, there is some nuance to this. This is in the the public article that's that should be accompanying this today. Uh the actual website's not out yet when I'm filming this, but I will link to it down below if you want to read the full press release. But, um it is a little bit more nuanced than this. So, they say, "Although it's a broad spectrum now artists use AI as a creative tool, the question of whether a profile represents an actual human is one where Spotify can help make a clear determination. The badge is about an artist's public identity, not about how the music was made. And so, what that means is if you are a a human that is using AI as part of your process, right? You've been You have these old songs that you're running through Suno, and like you wrote the song, you did this, and you're uploading it under your own name, or you're just writing lyrics and prompting songs and uploading on your own name. Like that's the the actual issue Spotify has is the problem of someone flooding the market with dozens of random artists with fake pictures or whatever. So, if you're releasing music under your own name, and you're not like just flooding it, um then they don't have a problem with you, it seems, because the issue is actually about like that, which is the vast majority of the problem, right? Like I'm sure some people are still going to be mad and say that they're mad that AI music is allowed on the platform at all, but this solves the problem. This means that if you're like a creative person who has some unique workflow with AI, or even if you're not creative and you're just doing it for fun, you can still exist on the platform. It's just you're going to be throttled in all these weird ways, but it still allows you to do the thing. So, if your only objective was to do this for money, you kind of can't anymore. You can only do it if you're actually in it for the right reasons, which to me is is more than good enough. Now, the news is actually even worse if you're an AI artist. Um essentially, Suno has also come in and produced all these little ways to kind of throttle AI music. One, recently they announced some watermarking, so they're going to be watermarking every song that's created so that it's easier for platforms to identify what's AI and what's not, but also they announced they're going to be throttling the amount of downloads you can have. And And I didn't think it was going to be this severe. I thought it might be, you know, you can generate 2,000 songs a month, maybe you can download download 500 or 1,000 a month or something. Like something where you can have way more than you need, but it's still like a lot. Um and it's not. It's actually like super limiting. For example, starting September 3rd, if you have the Pro plan, which is the most common one, people pay like 20 bucks a month, you can download 20 songs per month. So, essentially, it's a dollar per song to download, which also really solves the problem of if your only game in this was to download hundreds of songs and distribute them every month, you can't do that anymore. The only way you could do that is if you create a dozens or hundreds of different Suno accounts all paying that amount of money per month, which means you're going to be paying $1 per song download, which kind of makes the whole thing like at least if the gate the aim is to upload this on Spotify and get the algorithm triggered, it kills that whole model. So, if you're a human artist like me, you are probably absolutely thrilled. In my opinion, this allows all the people who actually were just having fun or found some unique creative AI workflow to make music to still exist and to still even monetize their music and to have it on all these platforms and market it. Well, leveling the playing field for us human artists who can't make a thousand songs a month, right? Like I I I need like weeks at least to work on a single song, whereas an AI artist can crank out a hundred in a day, no problem. So, now it's just like even 20 songs a month for downloading on Suno is plenty of music for someone to download and release, right? That's more music than any human artist would ever be able to release, but it still levels the playing field in such a significant way that overall like massive win for Spotify. Um, and also big I mean, I'm sure Suno's going to take a huge hit from this, but at least it makes it give the impression like, okay, they're they're water marking their tracks, they're starting to play fair with some major labels they've made deals with, and they're severely throttling the downloads. So, like they're playing ball now. They still have a huge amount of runway to go in terms of like actually paying artists and getting permission for training their music, but this is a big step in the right direction. So, hopefully this just continues because I in my opinion if any of these AI platforms want to exist and not go the way of LimeWire, then they they need to find a way to make artists happy. And this Well, no one's happy with Suno, I think we can most artists can be happy that this is this is a step in the right direction for them. So, anyways, if you're a human artist and you want to see how you can promote your music here or if you're an AI artist that's still releasing your music despite all these changes, uh check out this video right here to see my entire process from writing music on Spotify or other streaming platforms from start to finish. If you want to see whatever YouTube thinks you should watch, check this video right here and make sure you subscribe so you don't miss my next upload. Thanks for watching. Bye.