Spotify Has Been Allowing AI-Generated Songs To Be Published Under Dead Artists’ Names

AI-generated songs have begun appearing on the Spotify pages of deceased artists without permission from the artists’ estates or distributors.

Put another dollar in the jar, because Spotify has yet again encountered shifty AI behaviour on its platform. AI-generated songs have started to appear on the official pages of multiple deceased artists, according to a report from 404 Media.

Last week, a bizarre new track appeared on Blaze Foley’s artist page, an odd thing, given the country singer was murdered back in 1989. The song ‘Together’ was accompanied by an AI-generated image of a singer that bore no likeness to Foley.

Craig McDonald, the owner of Lost Art Records, the label that distributes all of Foley’s music and manages his Spotify page, spoke out against the song appearing on Foley’s page without his knowledge.

“I can clearly tell you that this song is not Blaze, not anywhere near Blaze’s style, at all,” McDonald shared with 404 Media. “It’s kind of an AI schlock bot, if you will. It has nothing to do with the Blaze, you know, that whole posting has the authenticity of an algorithm.”

Spotify responded to 404 Media, admitting it had removed ‘Together’ for violating its “Deceptive Content policy,” pinning the blame on music distributor SoundOn.

SoundOn is a music distributor owned by TikTok, allowing people to upload music directly to the platform and earn royalties. SoundOn also allows artists to distribute their music to other platforms.

However, SoundOn aren’t mentioned anywhere on these uploads. Instead, they’re attributed to a company named Syntax Error, whose copyright also appears on a number of other Spotify pages, including deceased artists.

One of these was a song titled ‘Happened to You’ attributed to Guy Clark, a country singer who passed away in 2016. Similar to Foley, the song was uploaded last week and quickly removed. A third song, ‘with you‘, also appeared on the Spotify page for Dan Berk distributed by Syntax Error. Unlike the other artists mentioned in this story, Berk is still alive and continues to release music. He has yet to comment on the situation.

There have been countless stories in the past few weeks regarding Spotify’s investment in AI. Earlier this month, an entirely AI-generated band ‘Velvet Sundown‘ suddenly appeared in several playlists. All images of the band were AI-generated, and all the songs appeared to be as well.

Daniel Ek, the CEO of Spotify, also announced a €600 million ($1.07 billion AUD) investment in an AI military start-up. Given that Spotify consistently says it cannot afford to pay artists more on its platform, this revelation upset and angered musicians and listeners alike.

“It’s harmful to Blaze’s standing that this happened,” shared McDonald. “It’s kind of surprising that Spotify doesn’t have a security fix for this type of action, and I think the responsibility is all on Spotify. They could fix this problem. One of their talented software engineers could stop this fraudulent practice in its tracks if they had the will to do so. And I think they should take that responsibility and do something quickly.”