Spotify to develop Artist-First AI Music Products to protect creatives

Artificial intelligence and every associated tech product are advancing and capturing the consumer market at an impressive rate.

More and more people are turning to AI. From every day people leveraging generative AI to jump through information, up to companies embracing the technology to scale operations and achieve higher productivity with lower costs, AI is fast becoming a tool of great usage in every space.

This growth pace, while positive for a great number of reasons, particularly to the individuals and companies adopting the technology, is also a major threat to businesses and creatives.

Within the music industry, AI is making great penetration, a notable example was reported across multiple platforms in mid 2025, where the Velvet Sundown, a rock band which amassed over 1 million streams on Spotify within weeks, was revealed to have been AI-powered.

These events create incentives for more AI-powered or enabled music to flood these platforms, threatening the position of many creatives within the music industry today.

Spotify partners with Sony, Warner, Universal, Merlin and Believe

AI technology is advancing quickly, bringing both new creative possibilities and challenges for the music industry. It’s critical for the music industry to join forces and act together to protect creativity while enabling innovation.

Today, we’re announcing plans to collaborate with Sony Music Group, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Merlin, and Believe to develop responsible AI products that empower the artists and songwriters they represent, and connect them with the fans who support them. We hope to bring on additional rightsholders and distributors over time.

Some voices in the tech industry believe copyright should be abolished. We don’t. Musicians’ rights matter. Copyright is essential. If the music industry doesn’t lead in this moment, AI-powered innovation will happen elsewhere, without rights, consent, or compensation. Together with rightsholders, artists, and songwriters, we are making significant investments in AI research and product development.

Spotify newsroom announcement | October 16, 2025

Tech solutions are generally designed to improve output by helping people do their jobs more efficiently, but AI tech is making these improvements by directly replacing the people.

According to Spotify, artists and their teams don't feel that emerging AI music products are built to power their careers, their businesses, and their fan bases, rather, they feel like short-term experiments built to compete with them, rather than long-term solutions designed to serve artists.

Spotify aims to protect creativity while enabling innovation by stamping out the worst outcomes of Gen AI with this partnership to develop artist-first AI music products.

AI is the most consequential technology shift since the smartphone, and it’s already reshaping how music is created and experienced. At Spotify, we want to build this future hand in hand with the music industry, guided by clear principles and deep respect for creators, just as we did in the days of piracy. Our company brings deep research expertise to this opportunity and we’re actively growing our AI team and capabilities to drive the continued growth of the entire music ecosystem.

Gustav Söderström, Co-President and Chief Product and Technology Officer, Spotify | official newsroom comments

This is a revenue problem

We look to the future to see what Spotify is able to build with this partnership and how that might change things within the streaming platform and in the music industry, at large.

In the meantime, however, we can discuss the elephant in the room, which is “revenue.”

This is a fight for revenue because AI enables people that generally lacked the ability to put out great musical works, to do that now, with even less time and money costs.

Similarly, companies that generally could not attract top creatives can now turn to AI to develop new names and hit pieces.

This creates a revenue problem for existing businesses and artists within the music industry.

The way I see it, collaboration will win at the end of the day, because AI will continue penetrating the creative industry and there isn't much that can be done to stop that.

The consumer market will adjust to it, not because they want to, but because it will get better and everyone wants better.

Active creatives in the industry, right now, have just one clear path to take or risk losing it all and that path is embracing AI early to improve their works.

It could be to improve their rate of releasing works for their supporters, or to directly improve the works being presented.

A combination of both gives these creatives a unique edge as the market grows more competitive. Right now, many think negatively of AI-generated works, but as the name “AI slop” goes, the reason these works will sell, at a much bigger rate into the next decade is because consumerism demands will not lower and when there's a market for something, supply will come, eventually.

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