Photo Credit: Mohamed Nohassi
Several jazz musicians face a wave of AI-generated tracks uploaded to their Spotify artist profiles without consent, featuring music that isn’t theirs.
Numerous jazz musicians, including American pianist Jason Moran, and Danish musicians Carsten Dahl, Thomas Blachman, and Chris Minh Doky, face a deluge of AI-generated tracks—often entirely unrelated to their own work—uploaded to their official streaming profiles without consent.
“There’s not even a piano player on this whole damn record,” Moran, the former artistic director for jazz at the Kennedy Center, remarked on an EP titled For You. The fake album appeared on his Spotify profile and was brought to his attention by another musician friend. “It wasn’t even remotely close to anything I would make.”
Moran said he reached out to Spotify about the fraud immediately, and it took about 72 hours before the company removed the faux EP from his artist profile. He admitted that the process was relatively painless, but it took time and hinged on him having been alerted to the fraud in the first place. Last year, Digital Music News documented several artist profile hijackings including country artist Blaze Foley, rockers Toto, and even King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard following their Spotify protest pullout.
“They allow it to just kind of sit there unless the artist finds it and checks it,” said Moran. “The demand that it puts on us is unfair in a lot of ways.”
Jazz bassist Chris Minh Doky had a similar experience, and said he immediately contacted both Spotify and Apple Music, where the fake tracks appeared on his profiles. But it wasn’t as simple as alerting the streamers to the fraud; he said they attempted to shirk responsibility, saying it was the publishers who were to blame.
After “extensive detective work,” Doky said he discovered the “companies behind the record companies with the fake numbers.” But none of them were particularly responsive to his inquiries. At most, he was told that they could not determine whether tracks were uploaded by Doky himself or a third party—which is concerning for multiple reasons.
He even tried to get his lawyer involved. But ultimately, the most effective course of action was complaining about the issue on social media.
“When I found out who it was, I made some posts on social media where I made my fans aware that this is not me and that they would like to report the numbers that were not from me,” Doky explained. “And I started to shame the companies that [claimed not to know] about the releases.”
Afterward, the fake tracks finally began to disappear from his artist profiles. But just six months later, the problem cropped up again.
“When I reached the third or fourth time, I think Apple and Spotify got a little tired of it. They said that because so many reviews had come—not only from me, but from my fans—[…] they were extra aware when a new release came.”
That’s led to the fake tracks getting removed much faster when they popped up again. But it’s like playing whack-a-mole trying to keep the fraud at bay.
“The platforms simply make so much money,” he added. “There must be money to be better at curbing these scammers.”
All of these musicians point to a slow and ineffective response from Spotify and other streaming services. To its credit, Spotify announced last month a new Artist Profile Protection tool to “give artists more control over what shows up under their name.”
“Spotify employs a range of safeguards to protect artists, including systems designed to detect and prevent unauthorized content, human review, and reporting and takedown processes,” said a Spotify spokesperson, who pointed out that the company is the only streaming service to offer a tool like that.
But Moran said it’s not enough, especially since the problem doesn’t appear to be slowing down. He said it’s especially egregious for artists like himself, who don’t put their music on Spotify, or for musicians who have long been dead.
“How does John Coltrane verify, or Billie Holiday verify, that this new record is not some fake, you know, ‘1952 just-found concert from Paris’?” Moran posited. “They have no way of doing that. There’s no way for them to object.”
Spotify said that estates or rightsholders for deceased artists can opt into the company’s new tool, as long as they have an account. Deceased country artist Blaze Foley was one of the first artists to be targeted by AI profile hijackers last year. For artists—alive or dead—who don’t have Spotify for Artists accounts, the company said it will continue to rely on its internal detection and accountability measures.
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