The music industry wants to put an end to the rise of songs generated by artificial intelligence at all costs. Spotify has decided to withdraw tens of thousands of songs created with this technology after the many complaints received for fraud and saturation of its services.
The music streaming company has taken action against Boomy, a music start-up based on artificial intelligence that uses this tool to create thousands of compositions without a human artist behind it. The volume of creations generated through this app is immense, but Spotify has only taken down 7% of the songs posted on its platform with the help of Boomy.
Spotify's decision comes after record giant Universal Music warned major streaming platforms that it had detected suspicious streaming activity on Boomy's songs, sources tell The Financial Times, where cases of "artificial streaming" have been revealed. ”.
This phenomenon consists of the use of online bots posing as human listeners to inflate the audience numbers of certain songs thanks to the AI, which had facilitated this type of activity because it allows to instantly generate many music tracks, which can then be upload to the Internet and play streaming.
The affected company, Boomy, allows users to choose various styles or genres to create an AI-generated track. His clients can then post the music to streaming services, where they will generate royalties, a business that would have led to the creation of more than 14 million songs.
"Artificial streaming is a problem that has affected the entire sector for a long time and that Spotify is trying to eradicate throughout its service," Spotify explained after the withdrawal of the songs, something that Michael Nash, digital director of Spotify, celebrated. Universal: “We are always encouraged to see our partners keep an eye on activity on their platforms.”
Precisely the same week that a song that used AI to imitate the vocals of Drake and The Weeknd went viral on streaming platforms, Universal had sent a letter to streaming services asking them to crack down on the use of generative AI. on their platforms.
Universal's CEO, Lucian Grainge, has been one of the leading voices in these complaints against the proliferation of songs on platforms like Spotify, where 100,000 new songs are added daily, and the increasing manipulation of the system.
In this sense, Grainge warns that "the recent explosive development of generative AI, if left unchecked, will increase the avalanche of unwanted content on the platforms" and that "it will create problems with respect to current copyright legislation."
Despite the fact that Spotify has withdrawn tens of thousands of songs generated by AI from Boomy, both companies are negotiating to add back to the platform's catalog those songs that do not seek the manipulation of figures and artificial streaming, a business that can blow up the popular music platform.
