New Delhi: Spotify has removed more than 75 million songs identified as “slop or spam” from its platform as part of efforts to protect artists and improve the quality of music on the streaming service.
The removed songs were found to have committed “serious or repeated violations” of Spotify’s rules. The company said this in a one-year update on its measures to protect artists, songwriters and producers from the misuse of artificial intelligence (AI).
The platform also filtered out another 50 million tracks from user recommendations following complaints about their quality. Spotify said it examined songs that listeners repeatedly skipped, ignored or flagged as unwanted and found that many were identified as slop or spam.
“Over the past six months, we’ve made numerous updates to our recommendation system to remove slop and spam, and surface more music made by authentic, human artists. Our editors hold the same standard and don’t program content identified as slop or spam. Since we made these changes, we’ve seen a marked decrease in listener concerns about this content showing up in recommendations,” the company said in a statement from 20 October.
The platform uses listener engagement and feedback, along with upload patterns, metadata and information from third-party AI detection tools to filter out low-quality tracks from recommendations.
However, identifying such content remains a challenge as generative AI technology evolves. Spotify said it was keeping a close watch on tactics such as mass uploads, duplicate tracks, search engine optimisation manipulation, spam-driven playlist networks and artificially short songs.
Spotify said 300,000 artists have now been verified on its platform. Their profiles carry a badge indicating that there is a “real, identifiable person” behind the music. Tracks associated with what Spotify calls “AI Personas” receive a separate label.
By default, AI Personas are excluded from editorial and algorithmic recommendations, unless a listener follows one, Spotify said.
The company has also introduced a beta programme called Artist Profile Protection, which allows musicians to review releases uploaded under their names and guard against impersonation and stream-farming.
As AI-generated music becomes more popular, Spotify’s efforts to identify and remove spam are likely to remain an ongoing challenge.