95
Spotify to distinguish AI artists from real people and block them from some playlists
(www.theguardian.com)
"Artists," huh?
this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2026
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All they are doing is blocking the 3rd party AI slop so they can push their own AI crap instead.
I'm a little late to the party, but just cancelled my subscription with them that I've had since before they were officially in Canada
I will continue to not use Spotify. Buying drm free music is a long term win.
Short of a major change in management and fair compensation for artists IDGAF what Spotify does.
Where do you get your drm free music? I've been using Spotify for a while but am very interested in switching. Do you use Bandcamp? Do they have basically everything a person could want or do you get your music from somewhere else?
Others have alrwady mentioned bandcamp, but far from every artist is on there.
I used to buy my music from 7digital, but they were bought by a shitty company, and also have not responded to questions about albums I bought that are no longer in my library.
So now I use Qobuz. They're a streaming service, but they have a separate download store you buy stuff from without a subscription.
I mostly get music from Bandcamp. They have a pretty big library, but it's mostly newer and independent bands on there. You won't find, like, the beatles or taylor swift.
Sometimes I'll buy stuff directly from bands, if it's not on bandcamp, via their store or label or whatever. I used to get CDs, too, and rip them, but I haven't done that in a while.
I do Bandcamp where I can but end up just yt-dlping YouTube and SoundCloud where necessary, and then I try to ask those artists to put their music in bandcamp or somewhere I can buy a download.
I just bought from Bandcamp last Friday cause it was a special day where all proceeds go straight to the artist. I made a neat little list of artists I wanted to look for on there, and most were on Bandcamp. Of the ones that weren't I think it was mostly because they're Japanese, so there's probably some other platform that they sell digital albums on rather than Bandcamp (Discogs was one of them).
You can download your music in multiple formats. The only thing that sucks is you have to download each album individually as far as I know. Some artists offer their entire discography in a bundle that's cheaper than individually buying each album, but do check if some of those songs aren't available for download anymore.
For me, I care most about having a working product and ethically consuming music as much as I can (afford lol), so the downloads and stuff is just quality of life things for me. I'm happy with my purchases and eagerly planning out a list of my next choices for September's Bandcamp Friday.
Also you can apparently stream on Bandcamp but i just selfhost a Navidrome and use that.
'Artists'
this latest AI stuff was just the last straw for me. Spotify has routinely shown disrespect for the artists they rely on
And allow them on some playlists
I figured the title meant they were gonna start blocking the real people
has anyone noticed more "Spotify" created songs in their queue? I had a sleep playlist and discover weekly that had maybe 20% ai generated songs created by "Discover weekly" or Spotify.
Spotify does that for a while especially for playlists that are played in the background where you do not actively listen to generate lots of plays. That way they do not have to give artists as much money as their own cut they take for themselves grows. If you go through background playlists https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX4Oe8zprVH3z most of the "artists" have little to no background information. If these are also from spotify we probably never know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversy_over_fake_artists_on_Spotify