Spotify released AI-generated songs by deceased artists without record company authorization

Since its launch, Spotify has been a huge success, offering its listeners a wealth of music. But for some time now, AI-generated songs have been flooding the platform, with some appearing on the pages of deceased artists without the permission of their relatives or record label, sparking several controversies.

One example is the official page of Blaze Foley, a singer-songwriter nicknamed Deputy Dawg, who was murdered in 1989 at the age of 39 and had been active since 1975. If Spotify is to be believed, the artist released a new track last week entitled “Together”. And that's not all, because on closer inspection, this track shows a country singer who bears no resemblance to Foley, although the musical style is akin to slow country.

According to Craig McDonald's, owner of Lost Art Records, the label responsible for distributing Foley's music, this song has nothing to do with the late artist: "It's kind of an AI schlock bot, if you will. It has nothing to do with the Blaze you know, that whole posting has the authenticity of an algorithm".

In response, Spotify reportedly pointed the finger at SoundOn, which belongs to TikTok and enables users to publish their music directly to the platforms: “We've flagged the issue to SoundOn, the distributor of the content in question, and it has been removed for violating our Deceptive Content policy”. 

But that's not all: at the bottom of the page is a copyright notice referring to a production company called Syntax Error. And this echoes the artist Guy Clark, who left us in 2016 due to lymphoma, for whom the AI-generated song "Happened To You" was published last week on his Spotify page and contains the same copyright. 

As a result, Spotify seems to be finding it difficult to control its platform, particularly in the face of the rise of AI, for which dishonest people are attributing songs to defunct artists without any consent. For his part, Craig McDonald's rants to 404media: "It's harmful to Blaze's standing that this happened. It's kind of surprising that Spotify doesn't have a security fix for this type of action, and I think the responsibility is all on Spotify. They could fix this problem. One of their talented software engineers could stop this fraudulent practice in its tracks, if they had the will to do so. And I think they should take that responsibility and do something quickly".