Spotify Says It Removed 50 Million “Slop Tracks” From Recommendations

Spotify has removed 50 million “slop tracks” from its recommendations to users, the streaming service said in a blog post published Tuesday in its latest update on how the platform is handling AI content on the service.

In Spotify’s latest For the Record post, the company said that “AI-generated slop and spam don’t belong in your recommendations.

“Earlier this year, we looked closely at the tracks listeners were skipping, ignoring or telling us they didn’t want to hear,” Spotify said. “A clear pattern emerged: these tracks were consistently ones identified as slop or spam. Over the past six months, we’ve made numerous updates to our recommendation system to remove slop and spam, and surface more music made by authentic, human artists. Our editors hold the same standard and don’t program content identified as slop or spam. Since we made these changes, we’ve seen a marked decrease in listener concerns about this content showing up in recommendations.”

A Spotify spokesperson said that Spotify identifies AI slop and spam through several measures including listener engagement, upload patterns and information from several third-party AI detection sources. Last year, Spotify said that the company had outright removed 75 million “spammy” songs from its platform.

Tuesday’s blog post is just the latest from Spotify as the world’s largest streaming service seeks to address the proliferation of AI content hitting platforms. Back in August, Spotify announced an initiative called “AI Personas,” a labeling system to disclose AI music acts. Music from AI personas are by default not included in Spotify’s algorithmic recommendations and editorial playlists.

AI music remains one of the most pressing issues in the music industry. While AI music generation platforms like Suno are becoming more popular, they’ve also received backlash from musicians, listeners and the major record labels, with both Universal Music Group and Sony Music suing Suno on claims of mass copyright infringement. Most notably, the labels have argued that the mass uploads of AI tracks are diminishing the royalties from actual musicians.

UMG had sued indie distribution service DistroKid last month on claims the company was helping proliferate AI slop on streaming services, claims which DistroKid has disputed. Last week, UMG and Sony filed a new legal action seeking to require DistroKid disclose how many AI-assisted songs the company releases, arguing the information is crucial in the labels’ ongoing lawsuit against Suno.

While more AI songs continue to get uploaded to streaming services, engagement remains low. As Spotify said on Tuesday, songs with indicators suggesting they’re AI-generated are 10 times’ more likely to fall short of the 1,000-stream requirement needed for songs to start earning royalty payments.