Spotify just dropped a bombshell: it’s purged more than 75 million spammy tracks from its platform over the past year. That’s a massive cleanup operation, and a pretty clear sign that the streaming giant is stepping up its war against AI-generated junk clogging up playlists.
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In a blog post, Spotify framed the move as part of its broader effort to protect authentic artists from the wave of generative AI spam and impersonation plaguing the music industry. While the company has been battling fake uploads for years, the recent boom in generative AI music tools — not to be confused with Spotify’s own useful AI tools — has supercharged the problem, letting bad actors pump out low-effort tracks at scale and even impersonate popular artists to siphon off royalty payouts.
To counter that, Spotify is rolling out a spam filter this fall that will automatically flag mass uploads, duplicate tracks, SEO-stuffed song titles, and other royalty-gaming schemes. The system will start conservatively (presumably to avoid nuking legitimate indie artists), but will evolve as scammers come up with new tricks.
Spotify also announced tougher impersonation rules, explicitly banning unauthorized AI voice clones of artists and promising faster resolution for cases where tracks are incorrectly mapped to an artist’s profile. The goal is to keep artists in control of their voices being used in AI-generated music.
Finally, the company is working with industry partners on a new AI disclosure standard that will let artists voluntarily credit how they used AI in a track’s creation, without penalizing them in search or recommendations.
This isn’t just about cleaning house, it’s about trust. With payouts hitting $10 billion annually, Spotify can’t afford to let spammers erode listener experience or eat into royalty pools. The platform seems intent on getting ahead of the AI wave before it swamps the ecosystem. And if 75 million tracks are already gone, it’s clear Spotify is willing to swing a very big hammer.
