Spotify's new verification system | Matt Connarton Unleashed

0:00 This is from Music Business Worldwide dot Com. Again, this is another great website. If you like music industry news as I do. This is this involves Spotify and of course AI music. We talk about this a lot on the show. This comes up all the time AI generated music. I'm guilty of it too. I used Suno to make things I haven't recently. But it is interesting. It's a lot of it's really good, shockingly really good stuff. But anyway, but this is an ongoing issue. These AI platforms that are able to create generate very realistic sounding like it was realistic, as in sounds like it was made by humans music.

0:39 So this article is titled sorry AI artists. Spotify is not letting you become verified on its platform, so it says here Spotify is introducing a new verification badge for artists profiles. It goes beyond simply confirming whether a profile is claimed and instead attempts to signal something the streaming platform says has been come harder to establish in the age of generative AI, the authenticity of the artists behind the music. The new Verified by Spotify badge, announced on Thursday, April thirtieth, will appear on artist profiles and next to artist names and search marked by a light green check mark icon.

1:20 Spotify said in a blog post published today that quote at launch, profiles that appear to primarily represent AI generated or AI persona artists are not eligible for verification in today's music landscape. The concept of artists authenticity is complex and quickly evolving, and will continue to develop our approach over time. Unquote. Now, the reason that's interesting to me is it's Spotify has made a big deal recently about getting AI music, AI generated music, AI persona artists because there are you know, it's not just people uploading songs that they make with one of these platforms like Suno or Udeo.

2:07 It's it's entire artists have been created with entire catalogs of music, and they're not real people, they're all they're just AI generated. Spotify has been trying to get rid of they call it AI slop. They've been trying to get that off of their platform. But now this almost feels like on some level, and this is not meant as a criticism, I have criticisms of Spotify, this isn't one of them. I'm actually somewhat sympathetic to the problem. Here. This almost seems like giving into that a little bit and saying we can't possibly filter out all this AI generated music and all these AI generated personas creating this music, sort of however you want to frame that.

2:48 So what we're going to do now is we're going to have this verification system where an artist who has been verified as being real with real music, they will have an icon next to their name, and artists that don't might be AI generated. So there you go. And I'm assuming that part of that. I mean, I'm maybe I'm making too many assumptions here, but I have to think that some of that is they just can't there's just no way to make sure that they're getting all of the AI generated music off of their platforms.

3:20 I know some people will tell me the software, the bots that they're using to detect AI generated music is so sophisticated, but it's still going to make mistakes. Some AI music is going to get mixed, I is going to get missed. Other music that is not AI generated is going to get swept up in the net. Because none of this is ever going to be perfect. Let's see, there's a little bit more here. It says the move follows Spotify's launch last month of the Artist Profile Protection feature in beta, which less lets artists review and approve releases before they go live on their profiles, and arrives just days after the streaming platform reported two hundred and ninety three million premium subscribers.

4:03 So they're doing really well with subscribers. Why is this important, though, If you haven't heard about this, the artist profile protection feature, why does this matter? What does this do well? There's a problem not just on Spotify. It happens on YouTube. We talked about it on the show. One of the first really major examples of this was somebody pretending to be Selene Dion and releasing a religious song on YouTube where this fake Celene Deon and the lyrics of the song is asking God to help her with her her what does she have?

4:33 A stiff person syndrome, stiff person disease. She's got a terrible, terrible illness. I feel horrible for her. But but someone pretending to be her release a song under the name Selene Dion and uh, you know, people believed it because it's this AI generated track sounded like Celene Deon. So this this seems like common sense. The artist profile protection features. So so somebody can't just say, Okay, I'm gonna release a song, but i'm gonna pretend it's Taylor Swift and I'm gonna put it on Spotify as Taylor Swift.

5:05 Well, someone from the label that Swift is on or management her management is going to get contacted. Is this legitimate? Is this an actual release? Obviously they're gonna say no, and then it's never going to make it onto the platform to begin with. Which is smart that I fully support. In January, again, this is from Music Business Worldwide dot Com. In January, Spotify had already retired its long standing Verified Artists blue check mark, which simply indicated that an artist had claimed their profile and replaced it with a registered artist label.

5:37 At the time, Spotify said that quote, over time, the term verified came to suggest more than the check mark was designed to represent. Unquote. The new verified by Spotify Badge now reclaims that language, but applies it to a different, more selective standard. Spotify said in a blog post quote, in the AI era, it's more important than ever to be able to trust the authenticity of the music you listen to. Our focus is providing you with more context about artists and their music so you can build more meaningful connections with them unquote.

6:11 To receive the badge, artists must demonstrate consistent listener activity and engagement over time, maintain good standing with Spotify's platform policies, and show signals of a real artist's presence both on and off the platform, such as concert dates, merchandise, and linked social accounts. Spotify said it will pair these criteria with quote, human review and judgment to identify real artists behaving in good faith, not just filtering out bad actors unquote. In the blog posts, Spotify claimed that at launch quote, more than ninety nine percent of the artist Spotify listeners actively search for will be verified, representing hundreds of thousands of artists, the majority independent, spanning genres, career stages, and geographies.

6:53 Unquote. The blog posts added that the company's prioritizing quote artists with active fan interest or who have made important contributions culture and history, rather than functional music creators and content farms whose content is primarily designed for passive or background listening unquote, Approvals will be rolling, and the absence of a badge on an artist profile does not mean the artists will not receive it in the future. According to Spotify. This goes on in some more detail if you want to read the full article because we don't have time to get to the whole thing, but it is up at Music Businessworldwide dot com, again a great resource for music industry news.