July 25, 2025, 1:53 pm | Read time: 4 minutes
I love music and let my ears be filled daily with various genres, from rap to rock or from film music to electronic. The popularity of the artists doesn’t matter–million-sellers like Lana Del Rey or Dua Lipa find their way onto my turntable just as much as the doom metal band Coltaine from Karlsruhe. Speaking of turntables: Yes, for five years I’ve been nurturing a steadily growing vinyl collection that sits nicely alongside my solid CD collection. Music streaming, on the other hand, doesn’t appeal to me. And with more AI-generated content spreading on Spotify, I really have no interest in the platform.
AI-generated Songs and Entire Bands on Spotify
From increasingly shorter songs to unfair compensation–there are several good reasons to view music streaming critically. And do I actually own what I pay for? Not at all, you’re just paying for access, not for the art itself. I like to own and support, and streaming music allows me to do neither or only very limitedly. Recently, reports about AI on Spotify have been circulating, which certainly won’t convert me but rather confirm my negative stance.
In August 2024, Spotify’s head of music for the German-speaking region, Conny Zhang, admitted in a TECHBOOK interview that there are AI-generated songs on Spotify. However, it hasn’t stopped there: Recently, the band The Velvet Sundown made headlines on the streaming service, being entirely AI-generated. AI music is not exclusive to Spotify. Deezer, for example, stated in a press release that 18 percent of all new music is fully created with the help of artificial intelligence.
Great, I can already feel my appreciation for this artificial non-craft skyrocketing. Not. Why on earth should I respect that in any form? Because someone “made the effort” to write a few (surely elaborate) prompts? Congratulations, you’ve successfully imitated art.
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New AI Songs on Spotify by Deceased Artists
The latest report that new, AI-generated songs by well-known artists who have long since passed away have appeared on Spotify takes the cake for me. This is reported by “404Media.” Neither their families nor record labels are said to have been informed.
In one case, a new song was reportedly removed. However, the issue affects several profiles of deceased musicians. Spotify has commented on the incident and insists that this violates the platform’s existing usage rules and that repeat offenders will be permanently banned from the platform.
Well, Spotify. Those might be the right words, and deleting such content is generally welcome. But what good is it if you simultaneously provide the means for repeat offenses? It reminds me of social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram, which can no longer keep up with deleting questionable content and are sinking into a swamp of AI content, fake news, propaganda, and hate from all directions.
Let’s Comfortably and Passively Be Overrun by AI
The Velvet Sundown, as a virtual ghost band, has generated millions of streams thanks to AI on Spotify. Most listeners probably didn’t notice anything was amiss. Yet the musical avatars have reached a larger audience than some indie acts. And that’s bitter, for music creators as well as for enthusiasts. Because what is successful multiplies–even if it’s wrong.
And because people are ultimately too comfortable and lazy and increasingly consume only passively and without attention, AI-generated songs could slowly but surely spread. Until Spotify, Deezer, and others completely lose the trust of artists and fans. In fact, there are entire sub-genres where musicians have already given up their dream of a career because of AI.
So what to do? For my part, I’ve never had a Spotify subscription and don’t plan to get one anytime soon. I will continue to rely on the real thing–physical media, which I sometimes buy as souvenirs at concerts by real people. In the end, it’s the human-made that commands respect. Although “human-made”: When I hear what the modern “hip-hop” scene blares at me with its boastful, elementary school-level, auto-tuned whining in the mainstream, one might think that humans and machines have long since fused. The audience gets what it deserves.