Spotify removes tens of thousands of AI-generated songs

Spotify has taken down tens of thousands of songs produced by the artificial intelligence startup Boomy, which allows users to create tunes in styles ranging from rap to lo-fi and then send them to streaming services where they can receive royalties.

Despite going public in 2021, Boomy claims to have produced 14.5 million songs, or 14 percent of recorded music in the world. Spotify said tracks were removed because the number of streams was artificially increased.

Tens of thousands of songs removed

According to the sources, Universal Music has warned all major streaming platforms that it has seen suspicious activity on Boomy songs, suggesting that bots are being used to inflate listener statistics. Following this warning, Spotify later removed about 7 percent of the songs uploaded by Boomy, or tens of thousands of tracks. “Artificial streaming is a longstanding, industry-wide problem that Spotify is working to eliminate across our service,” Spotify said in a statement. said.

a serious problem

Obviously, text-generating AI models (like ChatGPT) are trained with massive data. This training data also includes the songs of the artists. At the same time, artificial intelligence sound creation tools (such as ElevenLabs) can imitate the voices of artists exactly. Therefore, it is possible to make the following request in these instruments: “Compose a song with lyrics like Güneş, but vocals in the style of Şebnem Ferah. The theme of the song should be more in the style of Barış Manço.” Artificial intelligence tools clearly violate intellectual property rights while fulfilling this request. This is where the artificial intelligence response of artists and media companies stems from.

Last month, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said the music industry has “legitimate concerns” about AI-generated songs, adding that he hopes to “establish a position” where Spotify can protect creators but also allow innovation on its platform. A while ago, AI-generated songs using the voices of Drake and The Weeknd were viewed millions of times on TikTok and YouTube last month, before being removed for copyright infringement.