Highlights
- Spotify’s “Verified by Spotify” badge confirms human artists, not AI music.
- Over 99 per cent of frequently searched artists will be verified at launch.
- Critics say it may disadvantage independent, non-touring artists.
Spotify said more than 99 per cent of artists that listeners actively search for will receive the badge at launch, covering hundreds of thousands of acts across genres and geographies.
The platform noted that it would focus on artists who have genuinely contributed to music culture rather than accounts it called "content farms" designed around passive background listening.
The badge has already drawn criticism from those who say it does not solve the actual problem.
Ed Newton-Rex, a creators' rights campaigner and former AI executive, told BBC that the system risks penalising real human artists who simply do not have touring history or merchandise to their name.
He argued Spotify should instead automatically label any music that has been AI-generated, as some other streaming platforms already do.
Nick Collins, a music professor at the University of Durham, told BBC that the move was understandable but warned that checking the music itself would be far more complicated.
"AI usage is not a binary position between entirely authentically handmade and fully AI generated but can have lots of in-between cases," he added.
The announcement follows years of user complaints about AI content flooding the platform.
The most notable case involved The Velvet Sundown, a band that accumulated 850,000 monthly listeners before being revealed as a synthetic music project backed by artificial intelligence.
