It said the process would prioritise acts with “important contributions to music culture and history”, rather than “content farms,” with the platform rolling out verification and badges over the coming weeks.
With Spotify targeting AI-generated music and personas, some on social media have pointed out, external a verified account would only prove an artist was human, not that the music was made without utilising AI.
Ed Newton-Rex, a campaigner for creators’ rights and former AI executive, said Spotify’s approach could “punish real human artists who don’t have some of the markers the verification is based on,” like touring or selling merchandise.
Instead, he suggests Spotify could be “automatically labelling any AI-generated music” as some other streaming services do.
Professor of Music at the University of Durham Nick Collins said Spotify’s decision was “unsurprising” given the “ongoing furore around generative AI” but added it would be a trickier task if it ever tried to label the music itself.
“AI usage is not a binary position between ‘entirely authentically handmade’ and ‘fully AI generated’ but can have lots of in-between cases,” he said.
“We can probably welcome some sort of tagging system like this, though it may favour the more commercial and successful artists already active rather than new independent artists.”
