Spotify moves to expose the AI-generated artists…

In early 2025, a psychedelic rock project called The Velvet Sundown emerged on Spotify, rapidly amassing over one million monthly listeners with two albums released in June. The project initially presented itself as a genuine four-piece American band, complete with individual names, photographs, and elaborate biographies.

What happened

The Velvet Sundown utilized AI to generate its music, voices, lyrics, and imagery, while its social media accounts initially denied allegations of synthetic origins, claiming the work was created by real people. Following scrutiny from Reddit users who questioned the band's authenticity and identified clearly artificial promotional material, the group eventually updated its Spotify profile to admit it was a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction. Despite the revelation, the project retained over 100,000 monthly listeners, with several tracks exceeding one million streams.

This incident highlights a broader trend of AI-generated content flooding streaming platforms, a problem Spotify has addressed by removing 75 million spam tracks over a 12-month period. To combat this, Spotify announced plans to introduce an “AI Persona” badge starting in September to help listeners identify profiles that represent AI-generated identities rather than actual human musicians. These personas will also be excluded from editorial and algorithmic recommendations. This initiative follows similar actions in the industry, such as Deezer's efforts to remove generative-AI tracks used for fraudulent streaming.