About seven percent of all songs uploaded to Spotify by Boomy have been deleted, according to a report. But the reason is not copyright issues.
According to the Financial Times, Spotify has deleted "tens of thousands" of AI-generated songs. These come from a platform called Boomy, which advertises itself as helping to create AI songs and then monetize them on streaming services like Spotify.
In total, about seven percent of the songs uploaded by Boomy are said to be affected. However, the reason for the deletion is not the use of AI in music production, but the alleged use of bots to artificially increase traffic.
In a statement, Boomy spoke out against any form of manipulation and is in contact with Spotify to make the songs available again.
15 million AI "songs" already generated by Boomy
According to its own website, users of Boomy, which launched in 2019, have created about 15 million songs, which is said to be 14 percent of all music ever recorded in the world.
The phenomenon of fake streams is not linked to AI songs, but has been around for some time. According to a recent study, the French streaming market in 2021 saw between one and three billion automated streams. Specialized websites sell thousands of Spotify streams for a few dollars.
"Artificial streaming is a longstanding, industry-wide issue that Spotify is working to stamp out across our service," Spotify said.
With advances in artificial intelligence for music, services like Boomy are becoming more attractive to those hoping to make quick money online by combining artificial music with bot calls.
Copyright debate continues
Beyond the bot issue, generative AI for music will present the music industry with fundamental changes that the text and image industries have already had to deal with.
Although technical hurdles and, above all, the copyright situation still stand in the way of an AI system that can generate hits completely on its own, deceptively real AI imitations such as that of the Canadian singer Drake are already causing a stir.
An AI song that went viral on TikTok was soon uploaded to Spotify, but was taken down for copyright reasons after a short time.