Spotify Says It Removed 50 Million AI 'Slop' and Spam Tracks This Year
If your Spotify recommendations have felt a little less strange lately, there may be a reason. The streaming giant says it has pulled more than 50 million AI "slop" and spam tracks out of users' recommendations so far this year.
Spotify shared the numbers in a post on its newsroom, saying it spent the past six months reworking its recommendation system to filter out unwanted tracks and bring more attention to "authentic, human artists," Consequence reported.
What Spotify Is Calling "Slop"
"Slop" has become a popular term for low-quality content churned out in huge numbers, often with the help of artificial intelligence. On music platforms, that can mean mass-produced songs uploaded to game the system and collect royalties.
Spotify said it started by looking at tracks that listeners consistently skipped, ignored or flagged as unwanted. Over and over, those tracks turned out to be slop or spam.
That means everyday listeners played a big part in the cleanup. Every skip and every "not interested" signal helped Spotify figure out which tracks were junk.
The company said it has since seen "a marked decrease in listener concerns" about this kind of content showing up in recommendations.
How Spotify Spots the Fakes
There is no one magic tool for catching AI junk. "No single signal catches slop or spam on its own," Spotify said.
Instead, the company combines several clues, including how listeners engage with a track, listener feedback, upload patterns, song details and third-party AI detection tools, Gizmodo reported. It also watches for red flags like mass uploads, duplicate tracks, keyword stuffing, spammy playlist networks and songs that are suspiciously short.
"Using these signals together, we can identify likely slop or spam with more confidence," Spotify said. "As spammers change tactics, we'll keep updating our systems."
Removed From Recommendations, Not Always From the App
The 50 million figure refers to tracks pulled from users' recommendations. That means some of those songs may still exist on the platform, but Spotify will not push them to listeners.
For more serious or repeated violations, Spotify goes further. The company said it has removed more than 75 million spammy tracks from the platform entirely.
Spotify has taken other steps to protect real artists, too. In 2024, it began requiring tracks to reach at least 1,000 streams a year before they can earn royalties, which makes mass-upload scams less profitable. It has also started labeling AI-generated artist personas and has verified more than 300,000 human artists, who account for more than 99% of what listeners search for.
The Bigger Fight Over AI Music
Spotify is not against AI altogether. The company uses the technology in its own features, including its AI DJ, and partnered with ElevenLabs in 2025 to expand AI-narrated audiobooks.
But the music industry is wrestling with how to handle AI-generated songs. Universal Music Group and Sony Music are suing AI music company Suno over the alleged unlicensed use of copyrighted recordings to train its technology. Warner Music Group, meanwhile, settled with Suno and reached a licensing deal that lets participating artists choose whether to approve uses of their music and likeness.
Some critics say Spotify still has not done enough to remove AI fakes of late artists or AI impersonations of real musicians. The company has also faced pushback from artists over its leadership. Australian rock band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard pulled its music from the service in 2025 to protest CEO Daniel Ek's investment in AI drone technology.
Suno, for its part, has said it plans to add audio watermarking and fingerprinting to help trace AI-generated songs, and it has added download limits to cut down on mass uploads to streaming platforms.
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