Spotify said on Tuesday, 20 October, that it had taken more than 50 million tracks it classifies as AI-generated slop or spam out of recommendations this year, Music Business Worldwide reported. The figure comes in a one-year update on policies Spotify announced in September 2025, and the change affects which songs listeners are offered through recommendations.
Key points
- Spotify says it has excluded more than 50 million slop and spam tracks from recommendations this year.
- The tracks remain available on Spotify, separate from spam removals the company disclosed in 2025.
- Spotify says thousands of artist profiles now carry an AI Persona badge.
Spotify keeps the tracks available
Listeners can still find the tracks counted in the 50 million figure, but Spotify no longer places them in algorithmic or editorial recommendations, Variety reported. Spotify says it has revised its recommendation system over the past six months to favour more music made by human artists.
The company says it considers listener engagement and feedback, upload patterns, metadata and information from third-party AI detection tools when identifying slop or spam. Spotify also says those detection tools have limitations as generative AI develops.
Spotify says listener concerns about this material appearing in recommendations have fallen since the changes, The Verge reported. That is the company’s account of listener feedback, alongside its count of tracks removed from recommendations.
The recommendation figure is separate from more than 75 million spammy tracks Spotify said it had removed from the service entirely for serious or repeated rule violations. A Spotify spokesperson told Music Business Worldwide that the company first gave that figure in September 2025 and has continued removing rule-breaking content since then.
AI Persona badges and royalty rules
Spotify says thousands of artist profiles now carry its AI Persona badge, introduced in August for identities it believes are AI-generated. Those profiles are excluded from editorial and algorithmic recommendations by default unless, for example, a listener follows one.
The company also links its response to a royalty rule introduced in April 2024. Under that rule, a track qualifies for its payout only if it reaches 1,000 streams and a required tally of distinct listeners in the past 12 months. Spotify says tracks with indicators of a high probability of AI generation are 10 times more likely to fall below the threshold.
More than 300,000 artists have joined Verified by Spotify, according to the company, which says they account for more than 99 per cent of what listeners search for on the service. Its AI Credits feature, launched in April, lets artists identify roles and instruments involving AI in a song’s credits.
Artist Profile Protection expands in 2026
The changes sit alongside a wider shift towards labelling AI music. AI Affairs reported that YouTube Music began labelling AI-generated songs on player pages on 14 October. Apple Music introduced AI Transparency Tags in March and made them mandatory in August where AI was used to create a material portion of the content.
Spotify launched Artist Profile Protection in beta in March, allowing artists to review releases attributed to them before those releases reach their profiles. Thousands of artists have opted in, according to the company. Spotify says it will make the tool available to all artists by the end of 2026.
