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Spotify using AI to make new music from dead artists without permission [1]

['Séamus Bellamy']

Date: 2025-07-28

Less than a month after The Velvet Sundown admitted that its music was nothing more than AI-generated trash, Spotify's been caught jamming the catalogs of dead artists with AI-created crap. No permission from the artists' families had been given before Spotify rolled the tunes out. The same applies to the labels of deceased artists. None of this should come as a surprise. Spotify is a company with a CEO who has used his vast wealth, amassed on the backs of struggling musicians, to fund Military AI research. Good people.

From 404 Media:

According to his official Spotify page, Blaze Foley, a country music singer-songwriter who was murdered in 1989, released a new song called "Together" last week. The song, which features a male country singer, piano, and an electric guitar, vaguely sounds like a new, slow country song. The Spotify page for the song also features an image of an AI-generated image of a man who looks nothing like Foley singing into a microphone. Craig McDonald, the owner of Lost Art Records, the label that distributes all of Foley's music and manages his Spotify page, told me that any Foley fan would instantly realize "Together" is not one of his songs.

"I can clearly tell you that this song is not Blaze, not anywhere near Blaze's style, at all," he told me on a call. "It's kind of an AI schlock bot, if you will. It has nothing to do with the Blaze, you know, that whole posting has the authenticity of an algorithm."



Trying to spoof the public with musical slurry created using a computer is one thing. Generating said slurry and flogging it as the work of a dead artist is some next-level fuckery. Spotify is treating its listeners like it thinks that they're stupid. If you must stream, consider moving to a company that doesn't abuse its clients. Better still, buy your music and download it to your devices. Your favourite artists will get a bigger chunk of the payout, and you won't be funding bullshit like this.

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