Photo Credit: Spotify
One small step for Spotify, one giant leap for the fight against AI slop: The DSP is now testing Artist Profile Protection, an optional feature allowing professionals to review uploads before they hit their profiles.
Spotify just recently confirmed Artist Profile Protection’s beta, which arrives about six months after an outlined collection of AI-focused safeguards for proper artists. As many will recall, said safeguards – which will stop short of banning or even tagging artificial intelligence audio accordingly – surfaced as AI uploads were pouring onto real artists’ pages without authorization.
Apparently, the objective was (and presumably remains) tricking Spotify users into streaming imposter releases made to look like new efforts from their favorite acts, generating royalties in the process. Furthermore, the unacceptable practice ticked off diehard listeners as well as artists, who lost streams and possibly fans because of the scheme.
Enter Artist Profile Protection, which is currently “in limited beta” and, as described by Spotify, is “a first-of-its-kind solution to a problem that’s affected streaming for years.”
Available via Spotify for Artists, the tool, in keeping with its name, enables professionals and their teams “to review and approve or decline releases delivered to Spotify from most providers.” Of course, only authorized works will then proceed onto profiles and into recommendations.
Per the DSP, enrolled artists will receive email notifications, with the choice to green-light or deny releases from there. Moreover, the feature will require approval for one’s own music; with a denial, or in the absence of a timely response either way, “the release won’t list you or appear on your profile,” Spotify spelled out.
One approval-or-denial workaround: “an artist key,” or “a unique code you can share with trusted providers” so as to ensure that releases automatically go “live as normal.”
As for what comes next, Spotify emphasized plans to review beta feedback and make Artist Profile Protection improvements before rolling out the tool “to all artists as soon as we possibly can.”
An early suggestion: A no-exceptions ban policy for scammers who submit imposter uploads – or AI slop in general. According to Deezer, streaming fraud is already rampant on the vast majority of machine-made audio, whether attached to an actual artist’s profile or not.
Though cracking down may seem a tall task given AI tracks’ massive release volume, it’s worth reiterating that imposter uploaders have developed sizable slop networks to game the system. In this way, absent the much-needed ban on AI garbage, targeting repeat offenders could prove a relatively effective step out of the gate.