Good news for fans of music produced by actual musicians: Some important victories are being won in the war against AI slop and trickery.
In November, I wrote a column imploring Spotify — the leading music streaming platform — to make it possible for me to block any music made with AI from reaching my ears. The column was provoked by an entirely artificial AI song reaching the top of the country charts. It wasn’t an isolated incident. The New York Times reported recently that about a dozen AI-generated songs have hit various Billboard charts since 2022. Many of them were created by the leading AI music creation app, Suno, which built its model by scraping millions of songs written and performed by humans.
At the time, Spotify was sitting somewhat on the fence. It said it was working on a shared industry standard for disclosing when AI was used in the creation of music. So far, nothing has been implemented — but now that’s set to change.
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