Photo Credit: Randy Laybourne
Evidence may suggest that Spotify’s efforts to curb AI-driven slop have overcorrected, negatively impacting legitimate artists and their chance for discovery on the streaming platform.
Spotify’s efforts to combat AI-driven content have been confronted with a new challenge: the potential for legitimate recordings by real artists to suffer unintended consequences. That’s an issue raised by 11A founder Austin Staubus in an email sent to Digital Music News. Staubus recently sat down for an interview with YouTuber and music marketer Andrew Southworth and discussed what he described as troubling changes to Spotify’s search and discovery systems.
According to Staubus, follower growth has declined across 50 major user-generated playlists his company has monitored, with 22 experiencing reversals or outright follower losses. All 50 of these playlists were independently classified as “Likely Bot-Free” by Artist.Tools. This suggests that the playlists warrant a more thorough examination within Spotify’s current system.
Moreover, Staubus maintains that none of these recordings are AI-generated and therefore raises questions about whether changes to Spotify’s anti-spam systems are inadvertently suppressing legitimate musicians.
“We’ve seen evidence that an unnamed Spotify executive that confirmed in writing that this spam filter is making inferences on user playlists and the content inside them and based on those inferences, [Spotify] is deciding to either rank them or recommend them,” says Straubus in an interview with Andrew Southworth. “Where’s the opportunity there for the independent music space? Why would anyone try to build a user playlist?”
“User playlists, from my perspective, are one of the biggest differentiating factors between Spotify and other DSPs,” Straubus continues. “Apple and Amazon are primarily just pitch only. You can make your own playlist there, but I think as a user searching quickly for something to listen to, I often land on a user playlist and they’re often expertly curated and they’re a great listening experience. They’ve got high retention, so that’s what makes it surprising that Spotify is just all of a sudden like turning off searchability for so many great user playlists.”
While it’s difficult to ascertain whether changes to Spotify’s systems are to blame, the timing is apt, given that Staubus noticed these changes beginning on August 31. Spotify has, on multiple occasions, publicly outlined its expanding anti-spam operation.
In September, the company announced a music spam filter designed to identify uploaders and tracks using questionable tactics, including mass uploads, duplicates, artificially short recordings, and search engine manipulation. Flagged material would no longer be recommended to users, Spotify said, while also acknowledging the potential risk of false positives.
“We want to be careful to ensure we’re not penalizing the wrong uploaders,” the company said at the time, noting that the rollout for the system would occur conservatively.
However, slower follower growth and outright follower losses do not necessarily prove that Spotify’s system is keeping legitimate user-created playlists from being recommended. Similarly, Spotify’s track-level recommendation filter and the playlist-level changes alleged are not necessarily borne from the same issue.
Staubus cautions that this issue raises questions about financial consequences for independent labels, artists, publishers, and songwriters. The matter hinges on what Spotify has to say and whether measures intended to protect rightsholders could actually be disadvantaging them simultaneously.
