Spotify adds 'Verified' badges to distinguish human artists from AI

galleywest200

> With Spotify targeting AI-generated music and personas, some on social media have pointed out a verified account would only prove an artist was human, not that the music was made without utilising AI.

AftHurrahWinch

The headline makes this seem like they're labeling AI music, but it's actually just a scammer filter. Spotify is just making their internal anti-bot flags public-facing.

dlivingston

Can I have a way to exclude all AI-generated music from my recommended songs as well? Doesn't this only verify against content farms, not AI in general (i.e. I can get verified after making all the AI slop I want, as long as my human name is attached to it)? Can Spotify actually become human- and artist-first? Remember the magic of 8Tracks community made playlists? Those were incredible. And compared to Spotify's alternative of AI-generated playlists, AI-prompt-driven playlists, and AI DJs? _Yuck!_ Can I manage a catalogue of albums in Spotify without getting thrown into my playlist's list? Can I get extra content with my albums, like iTunes used to do? Behind the scenes, session tracks, lyric books and session photos? Spotify, of all places, should be a refuge for artists and a place to celebrate human creativity. It is SO COMPLETELY the opposite of that, from top to bottom.

cdrnsf

It's only a matter of time until streaming succumbs to slop, much like social media has. If it allows Spotify to reduce royalty payouts and attrition doesn't meaningfully increase, they'll keep supporting it. Meanwhile, real artists suffer and the rich get richer.

RankingMember

Great, now add the ability for me to have any non-Verified artists become completely invisible to me in the application.

reconnecting

The more appropriate question is why they published a AI artist at all. I think Spotify (or its owners/investors) might actually benefit from recommending AI-generated music by not having to pay real artists. Like Spotify owns distribution, their largest investor Tencent Music Entertainment Group publishes AI-generated music = almost infinite profit. From news: Tencent Music demonstrated strong revenue (1) growth in Q4 2025, with total revenues increasing by 16% year-over-year. CEO of Tencent Music stated, "Our robust revenue growth and expansion in non-subscription services highlight our strategic focus on diversifying revenue streams. However, we acknowledge the need to address earnings challenges to meet investor expectations." 1. https://www.investing.com/news/transcripts/earnings-call-tra...

bilsbie

I think I’m ok with this but can you search for only AI? Might be interesting sometimes.

bilsbie

Someone should make a free streaming service that’s only AI music. I’m not that picky.

mh2266

how are people getting this AI music on Spotify? where are you finding it? for example the home recommendations for me today are The Beths, Big Thief, Geese, and Sleater-Kinney. and it is all albums I have already have listened to, but fine, whatever, that's just bad recommendations, not AI. generally I use either the search box, which is always going to return the Geese album and not AI slop if I type "Getting Killed", or the library view on the left side, I don't think I've never seen an AI album on Spotify, where are you getting them?

milesward

put the onus on the people, of course. how about make AI music come with a warning label?

boringg

Do you have to pay for the verified badge? How much more rev do they get?

barbazoo

I would have expected a "un-verified" batch, this way they're giving AI "artists" legitimacy.

pdonis

So how long before an AI requests the verified badge and gets it?

frakt0x90

Too late for me. I was on Spotify since 2013 and switched to Qobuz due to AI, bad recs, and dislike for the company. Qobuz puts much more effort into manual curation so I still find awesome weird music and have encountered 0 AI. Mainly due to not relying on recommendation algos anymore. I'm sure there is still AI in there. Only issue I've encountered is an annoying playback bug when switching from wifi to data.

andai

I was at a department store recently and heard a song I hadn't heard before. There was something strange about the singer's voice, and for a moment I wondered if it was AI generated. Then I realized, I already can't tell the difference. It already might be! (Probably not, but you never know... maybe they put Spotify on autoplay ;) Strange times.

CPLX

How would this even work though? I'm a real musician and producer/engineer. I've gone on tour, put out several albums, and so on. I've also been involved in the music business and worked with a bunch of really well-known artists. I also have been playing with Suno like everyone else, and have made a whole bunch of songs that I think are hilarious that I've shared with my friends, where I write all the lyrics and detailed notes about what I want the song to be, and then AI does the rest. I'm not going to post it to Spotify, but if I did, what am I on their list? Am I verified or not? I'm a real musician. I have rooms full of musical instruments that I can play, and I can send pictures of them, but how does that relate to this policy of theirs?

jalada

Spotify pretending like they don’t want AI artists. Once you’re locked in, you won’t look, and they can make maximum ad $$$ and pay no one.

ssgodderidge

I’m be been using the publishing year on Spotify to determine whether or not a song is AI generated, or not. Anything before 2023 is most certainly from a human

cpeterso

Once Spotify has this AI metadata, I'd like a setting to hide AI "artists" from my recommendations and playlists.