Spotify to AI 'artists': you're labeled, but you're not recommended
Starting mid-September, Spotify will slap an 'AI Persona' badge on artist profiles that use photorealistic AI-generated identities instead of real humans, whether they self-disclose or get flagged by Spotify's own review. The bigger bite: those AI Personas get frozen out of Spotify's editorial and algorithmic recommendations by default, meaning their tracks won't surface in personalized playlists unless a user explicitly follows them. It's Spotify's clearest swing yet at AI slop, balancing its own AI tools like Prompted Playlists against a growing user backlash against fake musicians clogging the feed.
Spotify will happily sell you AI DJs and AI remixes, just not AI 'artists' it didn't build itself.