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Spotify clamps down on AI music in push to boost human artist royalties
The advent of AI tools that can generate large volumes of music has made spam tactics easier to exploit.
Spotify, the audio and music streaming platform, has set out its plans to combat AI-driven artists on its platform, as it seeks to increase royalty payouts to artistes.
The company has unveiled a strategy that it believes will better protect human creativity while increasing royalty payouts to genuine artists.
The world’s biggest audio streaming platform says it paid out $11 billion (Sh1.4 trillion) to the music industry in 2025 , pushing its lifetime payouts close to $70 billion (Sh9 trillion). That scale of money, however, has also turned streaming into fertile ground for AI-driven acts muscling in on space once dominated by human creators.
The company acknowledges that artificial intelligence is no longer a fringe experiment in music production.
Record labels are increasingly using AI tools to bulk up catalogues and distribute content across streaming services with the intention of increasing revenue, while blurring the line between human artistry and machine output.
Spotify now sees this surge as a direct threat to musicians who rely on streams for income, especially as low-quality, mass-produced tracks seek to exploit the system and siphon off royalties.
To counter the developments, Spotify says it is doubling down on the human bond between artists and fans on the platform by placing more emphasis on artist-led video content, ramping up promotion of artists' live shows, and giving its music curators more power to shape what listeners discover.
At the same time, it is preparing tougher measures to identify and limit AI-driven artists, tightening verification systems, improving song credits, and strengthening protections around artist identity so listeners can trust who is really behind the music they hear.
“AI is being exploited by bad actors to flood streaming services with low-quality slop to game the system and attempt to divert royalties away from authentic artists. We’re going to introduce changes to the systems for artist verification, song credits, and protecting artist identity. It’s critical to ensuring listeners and rightsholders can trust who made the music they’re hearing,” said Charlie Hellman, Spotify’s Head of Music in a press statement.
With these guardrails in place, Spotify believes more money will flow back to genuine creators.
This marks another chapter in the long-running debate over streaming pay, a space where Spotify has often been criticised over how much artists earn per stream.
The company maintains that its model has consistently delivered fair value, noting that independent artists and labels already account for roughly half of all royalties paid out.
“Last year alone (2025), Spotify paid out more than $11 billion to the music industry, the largest annual payment to music from any retailer in history. Despite rampant misinformation about how streaming is working today, the reality is that this is an era full of more success stories and promise than at any point in history.”
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