According to the Financial Times, Spotify has eliminated tens of thousands of songs created by the AI startup Boomy from its platform. Boomy offers users the ability to generate tunes in various styles, ranging from rap to lo-fi, and release them on streaming services to earn royalties.
Despite its public launch in 2021, Boomy claims on its website to have generated a staggering 14.5 million songs, accounting for approximately 14% of the world’s recorded music. However, Spotify removed these tracks due to artificially inflated streaming numbers, indicating potential stream manipulation.
Universal Music, a major player in the music industry, alerted various streaming platforms about suspicious activity surrounding Boomy’s songs, suggesting the involvement of bots to boost audience statistics. Subsequently, Spotify took down around 7% of the tracks uploaded by Boomy in response to Universal Music’s warning, as reported by the Financial Times.
In a statement provided to Insider, Spotify acknowledged that artificial streaming is an industry-wide problem and affirmed its commitment to combating it on their platform. The streaming giant stated that when cases of stream manipulation are identified or reported, appropriate actions are taken, including the removal of streaming numbers and the withholding of royalties. Spotify aims to protect honest and hardworking artists while maintaining fair royalty payouts.
The Financial Times had previously reported that Universal Music instructed streaming platforms to block AI services from training on its songs. The concern arises from AI’s ability to compose songs imitating the styles of different artists, potentially infringing on their intellectual property rights. A source close to the situation described how AI could be trained to create songs with Taylor Swift-like lyrics, Bruno Mars-like vocals, and a Harry Styles-inspired theme, leading to outputs derived from the intellectual property of these artists.
AI-generated songs using the voices of Drake and The Weeknd racked up millions of views on TikTok last month, before being taken down for copyright infringements, The Guardian reported.
