First up recently, Spotify’s “fake artist” problem already seen in 2017, again provided a topic of conversation, because a playlist with 49 almost identical songs by different artists made the rounds on the Internet. And no, this isn’t a scathing joke about how all pop music is constructed the same general concepts; These songs appear to be similar versions of the same piece of poorly produced music, each differentiated by random changes in pitch.
Between its gigantic size and anemic royalty payments, Spotify has rarely been without controversy. As a true kingmaker, ostensibly operating from the invisible hand of the music market, attempts to monetize the service are nothing new. Sometimes Large corporations are suspected of such conduct, including Spotify itself (the it emphatically denies). Smart artists have it too employed tongue-in-cheek stunts trying to trick the system, which is widely seen as brutally unfair to indie musicians. Recently, songs by no-name artists have been found to have striking similarities. It is clearly the same piece of music, beginning in the same manner and using the same melodic motifs, although the album art, artist name and root pitch of each version vary.
Taking to Twitter, media producer Adam Faze shared a strange discovery, collecting 49 seemingly identical songs into a public Spotify playlist titled “These Are All the Same Songs.”
A quick listen and, yes, there are shades of difference, mostly in terms of pitch. But these are undoubtedly all the same song.
As many in Faze’s answers pointed out, it all sounds like the product of low-effort generative music techniques or even AI productions – and no, not of the more respectable, exploratory kind composers, electronic musiciansAnd visual artists I’ve been experimenting with this for years.
Another weird quirk of the songs found in Faze’s cursed playlist is that every track is included similarly styled, bizarre stock images for the album cover.
It also seems that this phenomenon is not exclusive to Spotify. As discovered by musician Zoë Keating, Apple Music also seems to have pitch-shifted renditions of classical music attributed to the wrong artists.
my city has reached out to Spotify and Apple for comment.
While almost anyone with something like a Distrokid account can upload music to streaming services, Universal Media Group recently did accessed on Spotify To take a stand against AI-generated music that breaks the resemblance to established artists create new music. However, as with AI-generated visual art, these issues are unlikely to go away.
