Antrax’s Spotify page randomly alerted 1.1 million listeners to a bizarre AI-generated EDM album titled Crazy Sheep last night before promptly being taken down.
Anthrax‘s Spotify page both shocked and disappointed its 1.1 million fans yesterday after informing listeners the thrash metal band had surprise-released a new album. Except, it wasn’t a new Anthrax album at all.
Instead, listeners were met with a bizarre seven-track album titled Crazy Sheep, co-credited to an elusive ‘El Director’.
According to Reddit users who were able to listen to it, Crazy Sheep was an EDM album that bore no resemblance to Anthrax’s sound at all. The album has since been removed from Anthrax’s Spotify page, and the band has not mentioned the incident.
A quick look at El Director’s Spotify page reveals that the artist has released nine albums since 2024 (10, if we count the now-deleted Crazy Sheep record). The cover art for these albums features artwork that appears to be either stock or AI-generated images. Across these nine albums, El Director would work with a variety of other “artists”, like Kraft Panzer, who only has the single album, Verano 2025, to their name.
In truth, it’s impossible to know if these are real artists or not. However, given Spotify’s recent controversies regarding AI, it’s hard not to assume that these are simply AI profiles flooding Spotify with AI-generated tracks to be added to playlists.
What makes this interesting is how Anthrax somehow managed to be involved. Just last month, independent label owners raised the alarm about AI companies uploading AI-generated tracks to the Spotify pages of deceased musicians.
After being alerted, Spotify would remove the tracks and pin the blame on SoundOn, a music distributor owned by TikTok, which allows people to upload music directly to the platform and earn royalties. SoundOn also allows artists to distribute their music to other platforms.
It’s entirely possible that a similar situation occurred here with Anthrax, which might explain why the album was removed so quickly and quietly. However, until either the band or Spotify makes a statement, it’s impossible to know for sure.
We’re approaching ‘dead internet theory’ quickly on Spotify, but it’s been a known problem for a while. Just this week, rapper Young Thug allegedly admitted to spending $50k USD on fake streams for Gunna’s 2022 album DS4EVER to help it debut at #1 over The Weeknd’s Dawn FM.
Earlier this year, a man was arrested by the FBI and charged with the first-ever AI streaming fraud case in the United States. The government would claim that between 2017 and 2024, guitarist Mike Smith made over $10m USD in royalties by using bot armies to play AI-generated tracks on streaming platforms continuously. Smith would plead not guilty to all charges.
Spotify would also enter a PR scandal after The Velvet Sundown, an entirely AI-generated band, had garnered up to 800,000 monthly listeners on the platform.
Now that AI-generated music is finding its way onto the pages of real-life musicians, most of whom are entirely unaware of its origin, it’s making Spotify a more concerning platform for finding and engaging with real artists.
Blunt Magazine has reached out to Spotify for comment and will update the piece with their response, if they provide one.
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