When your favourite band’s new track is an AI pretend : NPR

It wasn’t how Los Angeles musician Luke Temple had anticipated to begin his Monday.

Temple was the frontman of indie rock band Right here We Go Magic, which has not launched music since 2015, a undeniable fact that made the flurry of messages hitting his inbox fairly baffling.

“I woke as much as DMs on Instagram saying, ‘Apparently Right here We Go Magic launched a brand new observe?’ Certain does not sound such as you,'” Temple stated. “Then I spotted it was on Spotify, Tidal, YouTube, all of the streaming platforms.”

The track, which bears no resemblance to the band’s psychedelic-inspired ethereal sound of synthesizers and swirling guitars, is the work of synthetic intelligence.

Accompanying the track, which is known as “Water Spring Mountain,” is an illustration of a waterfall. That, too, seems to be an AI creation.

Welcome to being a musical artist in 2025, when streaming platforms are being bombarded with AI-generated spam and AI tricksters are attempting to capitalize on the status of an inactive band, and even useless artists, to make a fast buck.

Earlier this 12 months, an AI-generated track was uploaded to the web page of Uncle Tupelo, Wilco singer Jeff Tweedy’s former band. The identical occurred to electro-pop artist Sophie, who died in 2021. And the nation music singer Blaze Foley, who died in 1989, had his Spotify web page vandalized with AI songs.

“That is certainly not a brand new downside,” stated Charley Kiefer, who heads digital account technique on the music label Secretly Canadian, which launched Right here We Go Magic’s albums. “But it surely’s one which’s more likely to change into more and more prevalent with out remediation from each plug and play distributors and DSPs,” he stated, referring to digital service suppliers like Spotify.

Concentrating on dormant bands with AI songs to ‘gather some pennies’

A lot of the AI songs emulating actual artists are removed from persuasive.

The AI observe imitating Right here We Go Magic begins with an acoustic guitar strum that appears like a pc imitating pop-rock over the lyrics: “I do know simply whisper your melody on the breeze,” which might not idiot any followers of Temple’s music.

But when the motivation is to make some trifling amount of cash, it could have succeeded.

Recording artists, in fact, might be fast to let you know that you simply’d have to breed that tactic on an industrial scale to ever eke out a residing.

Temple says if the technique is to focus on bands and artists who have not launched music in years, the AI scammers might probably do that quite a bit earlier than getting caught.

“It is sensible to go after a band like us, as a result of who’s to say we’re even checking or paying consideration,” Temple stated. “It looks as if they could possibly be doing this to smaller bands, or dormant bands, to solid a very extensive internet and gather some pennies hoping no one will discover.”

When NPR reached out to Spotify concerning the AI track, an organization spokesman stated it could quickly be faraway from Right here We Go Magic’s artist profile.

The spokesman pointed to Spotify’s new AI protections for artists and music producers, which incorporates stepped up enforcement of AI impersonators, like on this case.

The platform admits it’s preventing towards a ceaseless torrent of AI slop. Spotify says it has eliminated 75 million “spammy” tracks from the platform simply previously 12 months.

“As a result of music flows via a fancy provide chain, dangerous actors typically exploit gaps to push incorrect content material onto artist profiles,” the Spotify spokesman advised NPR.

Tidal confirmed to NPR it eliminated the track, saying it is reflective of a broader downside plaguing music providers.

“All platforms are coping with an inflow of AI tracks being submitted by way of third social gathering distributors. We’re engaged on higher methods to determine, tag, and when vital take away AI content material,” a Tidal spokesperson stated.

YouTube didn’t return requests for remark.

The Spotify spokesman famous that the platform just lately launched a instrument permitting artists to report mismatched releases earlier than songs go reside.

However as with all on-line scams and spam, it is a cat-and-mouse recreation, now newly supercharged by AI instruments.

A part of the problem is that music labels and artists don’t add songs on to platforms like Spotify.

As an alternative, unbiased distribution providers, equivalent to DistroKid and TuneCore, function middlemen, usually sending songs to streaming providers with none authentication course of.

The lax guidelines are being abused by individuals utilizing providers like Suno and Udio, the place anybody could make an AI track that makes an attempt to imitate an actual artist in a matter of seconds. As extra AI corporations develop comparable AI music mills to remain aggressive, the power to immediately create an AI track might be in much more arms.

Los Angeles musician Temple stated it is not nearly a spammy AI track taking away a fraction of a cent from the band with each play, it is the shameless id theft that is the actual travesty.

“It is so predatory, and so horrible,” he stated. “The precept of it’s so terrible. We labored our asses off for a decade and barely made any cash as it’s.”