Spotify Boots Out Thousands Of AI-Produced Songs As Fake Streams Rise

Spotify is removing tens of thousands of artificial-intelligence-made music from its platform after bots were suspected of being used to inflate streams, resulting in something known as “artificial streaming.”
 
Boomy is an AI app that allows people to create original music for free. Users can choose from different genres, such as EDM, lo-fi, or rap, to name a few. After which, they can change beats, tempo, vocals, and density. The app even lets them choose album covers for their songs before publishing them on Spotify, where they will earn royalties every time it’s played.
 
On the website, it is stated that “Boomy users have created 14,591,095 songs, around 13.95% of the world’s recorded music.”
 
The idea might sound like a fun hobby for music lovers and those who want to create their own songs but have no training or resources to get started. However, there remains much gray area over copyright issues when training these machines. Although, the takedown, in this case, was not about how the songs were created but about how they were getting their streaming counts.
 
Universal Music first alerted streaming sites that it noticed suspicious activity on tracks uploaded from Boomy. As indicated in Ars Technica, Lucian Grainge, Universal Music’s chief executive, stated that AI could cause an influx of unwanted content to platforms if left unchecked over the last few months. Grainge has been speaking out about the rapid increase of music to the site, with more than 100,000 songs added daily and potentially manipulating Spotify’s system.
 
As AI evolves and becomes more sophisticated, the industry will likely continue to grapple with its potential benefits and drawbacks. For example, Universal Music called for streaming sites to start cracking down on the use of AI due to copyright concerns. And within the same week, a generated song by rapper Drake and singer The Weeknd went viral online, and was promptly taken down due. 
 
Ars Technica reported that Boomy and Spotify have since returned to discussions about reinstating Boomy’s catalog. Boomy also mentioned that it is against streaming manipulation, and working with industry partners to correct the situation. 
 
 
 
[via Ars Technica and Mashable, ID 111390145 © David Molina | Dreamstime.com]