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

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

Temple was the frontman of indie rock band Right here We Go Magic, which has not launched music since 2015, a proven 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 mentioned. “Then I noticed it was on Spotify, Tidal, YouTube, all of the streaming platforms.”

The tune, 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 tune, which is named “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 try to capitalize on the popularity of an inactive band, and even lifeless artists, to make a fast buck.

Earlier this yr, an AI-generated tune 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 in no way a brand new downside,” mentioned Charley Kiefer, who heads digital account technique on the music label Secretly Canadian, which launched Right here We Go Magic’s albums. “However it’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 mentioned, 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 feels like a pc imitating pop-rock over the lyrics: “I do know simply the right way to 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 sum of money, it could have succeeded.

Recording artists, after all, can be fast to inform you that you just’d have to breed that tactic on an industrial scale to ever eke out a dwelling.

Temple says if the technique is to focus on bands and artists who have not launched music in years, the AI scammers may doubtless 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 mentioned. “It looks as if they may very well be doing this to smaller bands, or dormant bands, to solid a extremely huge internet and gather some pennies hoping no person will discover.”

When NPR reached out to Spotify concerning the AI tune, an organization spokesman mentioned it will 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 yr.

“As a result of music flows by way of a posh provide chain, unhealthy actors generally exploit gaps to push incorrect content material onto artist profiles,” the Spotify spokesman informed NPR.

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

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

YouTube didn’t return requests for remark.

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

However as with all on-line scams and spam, it is a cat-and-mouse sport, 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 a substitute, impartial distribution companies, comparable to DistroKid and TuneCore, function middlemen, usually sending songs to streaming companies with none authentication course of.

The lax guidelines are being abused by individuals utilizing companies like Suno and Udio, the place anybody could make an AI tune that makes an attempt to imitate an actual artist in a matter of seconds. As extra AI firms develop related AI music turbines to remain aggressive, the flexibility to immediately create an AI tune can be in much more fingers.

Los Angeles musician Temple mentioned it isn’t nearly a spammy AI tune 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 mentioned. “The precept of it’s so terrible. We labored our asses off for a decade and barely made any cash as it’s.”