Spotify removes over 50 million AI spam tracks from recommendations

Spotify announced Tuesday that over the past year it removed more than 50 million tracks deemed AI-generated spam from user recommendations, and changed its recommendation system to give human artists more exposure. Spotify said its editorial team applies the same standard and won't add content flagged as spam to playlists; complaints about such content in recommendations dropped notably after the change. Criteria include listener engagement and feedback, upload patterns, metadata, and third-party AI detection tools. Spotify does not yet require all AI songs to be labeled, but introduced an "AI Persona" badge for artists using AI identities that don't represent real people, and won't recommend music from AI persona accounts. Compared with YouTube Music's labeling of AI songs, Deezer's user filters for AI spam, and Bandcamp's outright ban on AI music, Spotify sits in the middle. For independent musicians and distributors mass-uploading AI-generated tracks to gain recommendation traffic, the platform has narrowed recommendations to human artists, so teams relying on AI persona accounts no longer get exposure. Spotify also took down over 75 million tracks flagged as spam last year, and is working with Universal Music Group and independent publisher Believe on AI music remix tools, showing it is cleaning up spam while still advancing licensed AI music features.