(Credit: Spotify)
Major music-streaming platforms are being flooded with AI-generated tracks, so Spotify is rolling out a new verification badge to show you when an artist is human.
To earn a badge, which will appear as a light green checkmark, an artist needs to have consistent listener activity and engagement. Spotify says it'll use this to ensure it's not only reviewing artists "experiencing one-time spikes in engagement," such as modern-day one-hit wonders.
Other aspects taken into account include whether the artist has linked, active social media accounts, concert dates, and available merchandise.
"We’ll pair these standards with human review and judgment to identify real artists behaving in good-faith, not just filtering out bad actors, giving you a more reliable signal of the authentic artistry behind the music," Spotify says.
The verification process will take time; badges should appear in the coming weeks. "Because Spotify is home to millions of uploaders and artist profiles, reviews and verification will happen on an ongoing basis to ensure accuracy and consistency," Spotify says. "Not seeing the badge on an artist profile doesn’t mean they won’t receive it in the future."
Spotify is also introducing expanded artist profiles to share key details, including career milestones, touring activity, and recent releases. "Much like nutrition facts offer a quick, reliable snapshot on what’s inside packaged food, these details—based on Spotify’s platform data—give meaningful signals of an artist’s authentic activity on Spotify, even for those who haven’t yet met our Verified by Spotify criteria."
(Credit: Spotify)This comes after Spotify retired the familiar blue verification checkmarks next to artists' names in late January in favor of a "Registered Artist" tag in the About section of artist profiles. "This update is part of a broader effort to improve transparency for listeners, by clarifying what the labels used on Spotify mean," the company said at the time.
The issue was that people thought the blue checkmarks were the mark of a successful artist when they really just signaled that someone had claimed a profile.
On the AI front, meanwhile, Spotify is doing the opposite of what rivals like Deezer have done. Instead of noting when an artist is AI-generated, it will note when an artist is real, which may indicate the extent of AI-generated music on the platform if there's no green checkmark.
Spotify hasn't shared estimates for how much of its content is AI-generated, but Deezer recently said 44% of its new uploads are AI-generated, equaling around 2 million tracks per month. However, those songs account for less than 3% of total streams.