Bad actors have been uploading fake songs onto real artist’s pages on Spotify and other platforms, according to a report by 404 Media. The scheme is fairly simple. They use generative AI to whip up slop songs and then take advantage of a distribution loophole to insert them directly onto a pre-existing artist’s catalog.
The loophole even gives them access to proceeds generated from the tracks, as the money does not go to the original artist. The payout is also likely to be much higher than with typical AI slop, as the fake track is co-opting an artist’s name and profile page.
it is shockingly easy to post AI generated music under the name of real artists on Spotify. It took us five minutes to do. You can do it to small bands, dead artists, even Taylor Swift. This is a giant loophole in digital music distribution that’s widely abused www.404media.co/spotify-ai-m…
— Emanuel Maiberg (@emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social) 2026-09-17T13:39:28.579Z
Here’s how it works, which was confirmed by 404 Media as they tested the process with the Brooklyn band Lathe of Heaven. The scammer makes a slop song via something like Suno or Udio. Next, they use generative AI to whip up an album cover. Finally, they sign up for a digital music distribution service, like DistroKid (the service 4040 Media used in its test). Once the song is uploaded, they just lie and say they are a real band and the platform does the rest.
Before too long, the song shows up on Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, Amazon Music and other streaming services as an actual new track from the real artist. All it takes is a willingness to make stuff up and the ability to check a few boxes on a website. Neither the distribution service or the streaming platform catches the error, so the song is allowed to garner wages for the scammer and ruin the reputation of the artist.
As always, smaller artists are more vulnerable to these scams. That’s because famous musicians often have teams of people checking for this type of thing. It’s also become an issue for dead artists, which is pretty gross. Spotify confirmed to 404 Media that “profiles that aren’t actively managed can be especially vulnerable.”
“Being able to enjoy the process of creating something and putting it out into the world knowing it is distinctly a product of our own hands is essentially one of the last driving forces behind making music,” Lathe of Heaven’s vocalist told 404 Media. “The fact that someone could ruin our reputation by dropping this cringe garbage under our name is insanely disheartening and speaks volumes about distribution and streaming services that allow this to happen.”
The musical group Odette Child began keeping track of the problem back in July and have since found more than 300 AI-generated songs pretending to be from major acts like Taylor Swift, random celebrities, dead jazz musicians and just about everything in between. The loophole existed before AI slop began taking over music-streaming platforms, but now it’s a matter of scale. It’s one thing to create a dummy song on your own and upload it pretending to be someone else. It’s another thing to use generative AI to quickly “create” and upload hundreds in a day.
Spotify is working on a tool that lets musicians review releases before they go live and become associated with their profiles, but it’s still in a limited beta. This feature was first announced all the way back in March. Statistics vary, but it’s been estimated that around 50,000 AI-generated songs get uploaded to Spotify every single day.
“We can just see very clearly that they are not interested in the best possible solution to this problem,” Odette Child said. “We need some sort of infrastructure that can protect us from this as consumers, listeners and especially as artists.”
Spotify has said that “protecting artists’ identities is a top priority for us, and we continue to invest heavily in detection and prevention.” It also said that it’s “working directly with distributors to stop bad submissions at the source,” which could mean that this loophole eventually gets closed.
Amazon Music issued some corporate speak and said it’s “committed to continuously improving our enforcement through advanced detection technologies and refined monitoring systems, and we’re in regular dialogue with partners and rights holders to ensure we’re protecting artists’ and songwriters’ interests as the landscape evolves.”
It’s not as if these platforms have been sitting idly by. They have been taking steps to address the issue, but these steps don’t seem to be working. Spotify has a new verification badge that confirms a song is not AI-generated. It has also introduced a spam filter that looks for “mass uploads, duplicates, SEO hacks, artificially short track abuse and other forms of slop”
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