Spotify Has Removed 75 Million Songs to Combat AI Slop

Normally it’s bad news when a streaming service suddenly deletes a whole bunch of titles from its library. That usually happens because some executive decides to eliminate a whole bunch of titles for purely financial reasons. That is not the case with Spotify’s deletions. The audio streamer has announced it has removed 75 million songs because they aren’t the work of actual humans. It’s getting rid of AI “slop.” More importantly, it’s working to prevent even more from making its way to your ears.

Spotify says it has deleted a whopping 75 million tracks from its service in the last year. In a statement the company said that while technology has always shaped music,” this is a response to an influx of generative AI” that has led to a whole bunch of garbage no one wants. Here’s what Spotify said about the songs it has been eliminating and why:

…the pace of recent advances in generative AI technology has felt quick and at times unsettling, especially for creatives. At its best, AI is unlocking incredible new ways for artists to create music and for listeners to discover it. At its worst, AI can be used by bad actors and content farms to confuse or deceive listeners, push “slop” into the ecosystem, and interfere with authentic artists working to build their careers. That kind of harmful AI content degrades the user experience for listeners and often attempts to divert royalties to bad actors.

Spotify claiming to worry about paying artists is a little rich, but we’ll focus on the good thing right now. That includes new steps the company is taking to keep AI songs off of the service. Spotify cites three ways it is “aggressively protecting against the worst parts of Gen AI” for artists and producers.

1. Improved enforcement of impersonation violations.
2. A new spam filtering system
3. AI disclosures for music with industry-standard credits

That’s music to our ears. Assuming an actual human wrote this press release.