AI slop is flooding every single digital platform, and music streaming services are no exception—so much so, even someone who generally avoids AI might find themselves unknowingly listening to a robot hornily singing about butts.
Take the sordid saga of “Make Love to My Shitter,” an AI-generated track from an artist called BannedVinylCollection. Brace Belden, a host of the popular politics podcast TrueAnon, says that Spotify recently queued up the bawdy song after he’d finished listening to alt-country legend Lucinda Williams’ 1992 album Sweet Old World. “I didn’t realize the song was AI at first,” he says. “I thought it might’ve been some obscene joke record from the 80s or 90s.”
The person behind BannedVinylCollection, who goes by “JB” and would not otherwise identify themselves to WIRED, confirmed that his output of X-rated novelty songs are made with AI. Other tunes in BannedVinylCollection’s butt erotica-themed oeuvre include “Grant Me Rectal Delight” and “Taste My Ass.” He says that he is making some money off the music, though most of the profit comes from Patreon and Bandcamp rather than Spotify. “I think it’s fair to make money from it,” he says. “Each song can take hours to make.” His monthly earnings on Spotify, he says, are around $200.
Tim Ingham, the founder and publisher of the trade publication Music Business Worldwide, documented his own experience tracking AI-generated music on Spotify last week. Like Belden, the first AI-generated music Spotify served up to him fell under the adult novelty umbrella; instead of butt-themed country music, it was 70s soul-inspired songs about substance use like “I Caught Santa Claus Sniffing Cocaine.” Browsing around Spotify, Ingham writes that he quickly identified 13 artists that appear to be AI-fueled “with approximately 4.1 million cumulative monthly listeners between them.” Not all of this music was overtly goofy—some of it simply imitates popular genres like country.
Spotify did not respond to requests for comment.
The mainstreaming of AI music is not contained to Spotify alone. French music streaming app Deezer tracks the volume of AI songs on its platform and has found in recent months that its AI detection system flags 18 percent of tracks uploaded per day, which is around 600,000 songs per month. While Deezer’s tools flag and remove some AI content, like the other major streamers, it doesn’t yet offer a way for listeners to proactively block AI-generated songs from appearing through algorithmic recommendations. “I fully believe that all streaming platforms shouldn’t allow the music to be uploaded,” says Belden. Right now, there’s no such streamer with a blanket AI ban. Major platforms like Spotify and YouTube prohibit AI music that deepfakes actual artists, while YouTube requires creators to label “realistic” AI content. Spotify does not have a disclosure rule around labeling content that’s AI.
Belden initially shared his story on X last week after media reports highlighted the overnight success of the Velvet Sundown, a psychedelic rock band that had swiftly amassed over half a million monthly listeners on Spotify within weeks of debuting its music on the platform. Reporters described both the images the band used to promote itself and its music as obviously AI-generated.
Source: Wired
