Photo credit: Markus Spiske
Spotify has reportedly withdrawn “tens of thousands” of Boomy songs after days of halting distribution over allegedly fake streams — even though the sizable collection of removed works accounts for just seven percent of the AI music generator’s releases on the platform.
These latest details about the Boomy-Spotify impasse (and the rapidly evolving role of AI in the industry) were revealed in a Financial Times article, after the former platform announced over the weekend that it was launching “curated delivery”. would resume their tracks on Spotify.
However, when making the announcement, Boomy chose not to disclose how many of his works were available on the Stockholm-based service, but how many of those tracks were dismantled? For reference, the present AI technology has been used since Monday last week to produce over 23,000 songs per day on average, according to data on Boomy’s website.
Meanwhile, the aforementioned FT article has pointed out that Spotify has removed about seven percent of Boomy’s uploaded music, or tens of thousands of works, after Universal Music Group allegedly identified suspicious streaming activity on certain content from the AI developer and reported (to all leading platforms) had reported .
Needless to say, there are plenty of incentives for for-profit individuals to distribute songs via Boomy (as well as other AIs) and then try to increase their stream numbers to rake in bigger royalties. According to Boomy’s website, users receive 80 percent of their projects’ streaming royalties “minus distribution fees.”
Boomy Pro subscribers can publish an unlimited number of tracks, and Boomy also offers options for auto-generated song titles, artist names, and cover art. So with no real investments (financial, creative, or time) at risk, it’s unclear whether the Spotify bans will discourage those same enterprising individuals from making similar moves in the future.
Certainly, not a few observers have pointed out the multitude of “artist” profiles through which seemingly AI-generated “songs” stream onto streaming services. Generally, these profiles have random names and generic photos, while many of their works appear to share significant similarities in tone, length, and more.
In the longer term, it goes without saying that successfully flagging a tiny fraction of a company’s AI projects for allegedly fake streams isn’t a viable solution to the overarching problems posed by an endless stream of machine-created music. Universal Music (which funded an AI music company in 2022) and Warner Music Group (WMG) say they are working with streaming services on reforms, though neither company has publicly named Spotify as a partner in the initiatives.
Aside from proliferating AI songs attributed to new artist profiles, artificial intelligence is making works sound like releases by drakeThe Beatles, KanyeWest, and a plethora of others. Additionally, Grimes has launched a platform that allows fans to create songs with an AI representation of their voice in exchange for a portion of the resulting royalties.