Dangerous actors have been importing faux songs onto actual artist’s pages on Spotify and different platforms, in accordance with a report by 404 Media. The scheme is pretty easy. They use generative AI to whip up slop songs after which benefit from a distribution loophole to insert them immediately onto a pre-existing artist’s catalog.
The loophole even provides them entry to proceeds generated from the tracks, as the cash doesn’t go to the unique artist. The payout can also be prone to be a lot greater than with typical AI slop, because the faux observe is co-opting an artist’s identify and profile web page.
it’s shockingly simple to put up AI generated music underneath the identify of actual artists on Spotify. It took us 5 minutes to do. You are able to do it to small bands, lifeless artists, even Taylor Swift. This can be a large loophole in digital music distribution that is extensively abused www.404media.co/spotify-ai-m…
— Emanuel Maiberg (@emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social) 2026-09-17T13:39:28.579Z
This is the way it works, which was confirmed by 404 Media as they examined the method with the Brooklyn band Lathe of Heaven. The scammer makes a slop tune through one thing like Suno or Udio. Subsequent, they use generative AI to whip up an album cowl. Lastly, they join a digital music distribution service, like DistroKid (the service 4040 Media utilized in its take a look at). As soon as the tune is uploaded, they only lie and say they’re an actual band and the platform does the remainder.
Earlier than too lengthy, the tune reveals up on Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, Amazon Music and different streaming providers as an precise new observe from the true artist. All it takes is a willingness to make stuff up and the power to test just a few packing containers on a web site. Neither the distribution service or the streaming platform catches the error, so the tune is allowed to garner wages for the scammer and damage the fame of the artist.
As at all times, smaller artists are extra weak to those scams. That is as a result of well-known musicians usually have groups of individuals checking for one of these factor. It is also turn out to be a problem for lifeless artists, which is fairly gross. Spotify confirmed to 404 Media that “profiles that are not actively managed may be particularly weak.”
“With the ability to benefit from the course of of making one thing and placing it out into the world understanding it’s distinctly a product of our personal fingers is basically one of many final driving forces behind making music,” Lathe of Heaven’s vocalist informed 404 Media. “The truth that somebody may damage our fame by dropping this cringe rubbish underneath our identify is insanely disheartening and speaks volumes about distribution and streaming providers that permit this to occur.”
The musical group Odette Little one started preserving observe of the issue again in July and have since discovered greater than 300 AI-generated songs pretending to be from main acts like Taylor Swift, random celebrities, lifeless jazz musicians and nearly every thing in between. The loophole existed earlier than AI slop started taking on music-streaming platforms, however now it is a matter of scale. It is one factor to create a dummy tune by yourself and add it pretending to be another person. It is one other factor to make use of generative AI to rapidly “create” and add lots of in a day.
Spotify is engaged on a instrument that lets musicians overview releases earlier than they go stay and turn out to be related to their profiles, however it’s nonetheless in a restricted beta. This characteristic was first introduced all the best way again in March. Statistics fluctuate, however it’s been estimated that round 50,000 AI-generated songs get uploaded to Spotify each single day.
“We are able to simply see very clearly that they aren’t concerned with the very best answer to this downside,” Odette Little one stated. “We want some kind of infrastructure that may shield us from this as customers, listeners and particularly as artists.”
Spotify has stated that “defending artists’ identities is a high precedence for us, and we proceed to take a position closely in detection and prevention.” It additionally stated that it is “working immediately with distributors to cease dangerous submissions on the supply,” which may imply that this loophole ultimately will get closed.
Amazon Music issued some company converse and stated it is “dedicated to constantly bettering our enforcement by means of superior detection applied sciences and refined monitoring techniques, and we’re in common dialogue with companions and rights holders to make sure we’re defending artists’ and songwriters’ pursuits because the panorama evolves.”
It isn’t as if these platforms have been sitting idly by. They’ve been taking steps to deal with the difficulty, however these steps aren’t working. Spotify has a brand new verification badge that confirms a tune just isn’t AI-generated. It has additionally launched a spam filter that appears for “mass uploads, duplicates, website positioning hacks, artificially brief observe abuse and different types of slop”
