Office raves, arcade raves and a McDonald’s dance floor

HBO’s version landed on January 29, when it teamed up with Boiler Room to promote season four of Industry, its drama about young London finance workers. After an invite-only screening of episode four, fans who had applied for free invites got into a Brooklyn warehouse party with The Dare, Chicken, Kassie Krut and Justin Strauss on the decks and cast members on the floor. HBO’s marketing team told the Journal it treats these nights as content machines: the crowd in the room is one audience, and everyone who sees the footage in their feeds is the bigger one.

Spotify and LinkedIn took a different route on April 1 with an office-themed party in New York for former accountant John Summit ahead of his album CTRL ESCAPE. Spotify built the guest list from his top listeners in the city, the same superfan targeting that drives its Reserved ticketing program.

It isn’t only media companies. McDonald’s let DJ Snake turn its Champs-Élysées restaurant in Paris into a late-night rave in June 2023 to launch his signature meal and a Pardon My French capsule collection, then brought in Loud Luxury to DJ Grimace’s birthday party in Chicago in June 2025. Dave & Buster’s started hosting ticketed arcade raves at its Hollywood location in early 2023, selling more than 1,000 tickets within an hour, then rolled the format out to cities from Miami to Brooklyn with the Brownies & Lemonade crew among its partners.

The vampire test

Not everyone in the scene would call these raves. London DJ and NTS Radio host Toshiki Ohta told the Journal that brands risk looking vampiric when they take from rave culture without giving anything back, and that earning a place takes years of steady support. The brand he held up as having done it was Red Bull, which he credited with “quite a significant financial and cultural contribution” to dance music.

Red Bull’s 28-year head start

Red Bull Music Academy started in Berlin in 1998 as a traveling bootcamp for up-and-coming producers and DJs, counted Flying Lotus, Nina Kraviz and Objekt among its alumni, and ran for more than 20 years before it shut down along with Red Bull Radio on October 31, 2019.

The brand never left the festival grounds. At Coachella, the Red Bull Mirage returned for its second year in April as a three-story, 20,000-square-foot hospitality space with DJ sets, a club looking out on the Quasar stage and Nobu omakase on reservation. At Ultra, Red Bull is hard to miss anywhere in Bayfront Park. Past editions have brought custom Red Bull booths wrapped in its blue, red and yellow graphics and a big blue Red Bull tent, and in March this year it was the official energy drink, running a two-story bar by the main stage with a VIP viewing deck up top plus a shipping container bar. Its tents and bars are a fixture at Canadian festivals too, from VELD in Toronto to FVDED in the Park in Surrey.

It also throws its own. Red Bull teamed up with Brightline in 2024 on NEXT STOP: ULTRA, a train takeover with DJ sets from Orlando to Miami. On June 20 this year, Red Bull Midsummer ran daytime events in New York, Tokyo, Mumbai, Vienna, Berlin, London and Los Angeles, linked by a live broadcast over 28 hours. Lineups were built with local promoters and collectives, putting FISHER, Jyoty, DJ Seinfeld and TOKiMONSTA alongside homegrown acts.

Celsius powers Breakaway

Celsius took the newer route of attaching itself to one festival brand and growing with it. It signed on as presenting sponsor of Breakaway for all 10 tour stops in 2024, then renewed for 2025 as Breakaway expanded to 12 cities, adding a Celsius Vibe House with games and sampling, hydration stations and pre-show fitness classes with festival DJs. Breakaway’s 2026 run grew again to 14 cities, presented once more by Celsius. Three straight years as presenting sponsor while the tour keeps adding markets is about as clear a sign of a partnership working as the festival business offers.

Lululemon runs it back with John Summit

Lululemon has its own dance music tradition in Vancouver. SeaWheeze, the half marathon it launched in 2012, finishes with a Sunset Festival, and after the last in-person race in 2019 and two virtual pandemic editions, it went dark for years. It returned this August with John Summit headlining the Sunset Festival at Brockton Oval in Stanley Park, and lululemon says nearly 10,000 runners from 24 countries took part while 15,000 people came out for the party.

Summit and lululemon had been building toward that for a while. In September 2025, he joined a lululemon community run at The Vessel in New York that ended with a surprise DJ set on the High Line, and a month later he soundtracked a lululemon sunrise HIIT class in Boulder hours before playing to more than 50,000 people at Folsom Field. At his Experts Only Ski Weekender in Whistler in March, lululemon ran Mat Pilates, yoga and sound bath sessions at the Audain Art Museum, and the two now sell a co-branded Experts Only // lululemon tech tee built for running, training and skiing.

BeatBox puts DJs on its art car

BeatBox started in 2012 at the University of Texas at Austin, took $1 million from Mark Cuban on Shark Tank in 2014, and built its brand at festivals, showing up at more than 300 festivals and live events in 2025. Its BoomBox Art Car rolls through Insomniac festivals, including EDC Las Vegas and HARD Summer this year, and it returns for two nights at Escape Halloween on October 30 and 31. For Dreamstate SoCal 2024, it ran a DJ casting call through Insomniac’s Discovery Project that gave selected unknowns a set on the art car, festival passes and $500 toward travel. That’s the kind of detail that separates sponsoring a rave from feeding one. Anheuser-Busch agreed in December 2025 to buy 85% of BeatBox for $490 million.

Ghost goes all in on Insomniac

Las Vegas-area energy brand Ghost made the biggest single bet of the group. In May 2023, it signed a multi-year deal to become the exclusive energy drink at every Insomniac festival and event, debuting at EDC Las Vegas with a glow-in-the-dark Wide Awake Watermelon can and bars along Rainbow Road. More EDC flavors followed, including Electric Limeade in 2024 and Kinetic Colada for the 30th anniversary in May, and Ghost now sits behind the bars at everything from EDC to Beyond Wonderland. Keurig Dr Pepper agreed in 2024 to buy a 60% stake in the company for $990 million, so the budget for this kind of presence isn’t going anywhere. By Ohta’s measure, Ghost is three years into a test Red Bull has been passing for nearly three decades.

Festivals put brand names on the stages

EDC Las Vegas shows how deep brand programming now runs at a major festival. Alongside the BeatBox art car, this year’s 30th anniversary edition had eight art cars and side stages, and three of them carried a sponsor’s name on the sign: the Takis Zone, the Electrolit Hydration House and CASA BACARDÍ at Daisy Fields.

Hip-hop festivals sell the same real estate. When Rolling Loud set up at Camping World Stadium in Orlando in May for its only US edition of the year, its main stage was the Under Armour Stage, where headliners including Don Toliver and Playboi Carti performed. Under Armour signed on as the festival’s exclusive performance apparel partner and built a Fit For The Pit hub with recovery and fitness lounges, giveaways and limited-edition Rolling Loud x Under Armour gear.

Coachella runs its brand programming on an even bigger scale. BizBash’s roundup of this year’s top Coachella activations ran to 30 entries, from Coca-Cola’s retro Pop Shop diner to Pinterest’s phone-free space. The one with the longest run is Heineken, which marked its 23rd year as Coachella’s official beer in April, and hosting Heineken House stage at Coachella every year since 2014.

The brands that skip the party

Some of the clearest passes on Ohta’s test have nothing to do with a branded stage. Jägermeister’s Save the Night campaign, launched in 2020, has run a grant fund for nightlife projects since 2022 alongside RA and London’s fabric. The 2025 pot was €156,000 for projects built around safety, inclusion and sustainability, and Jägermeister counts more than 1,200 projects supported across over 60 countries since the campaign began. Boiler Room, HBO’s partner on the Industry night, has a long-running brand relationship of its own. Ballantine’s has backed Boiler Room’s True Music series since the mid-2010s, and the pair marked 10 years together in 2024 with 10 events across cities like London and Johannesburg plus 10 grants for local music organizations and collectives.

After the campaign ends

HBO’s marketing lead was upfront with the Journal that its parties are built to make people feel a show, not to throw a rave for its own sake. That’s an honest pitch, and a free Boiler Room night with a strong local lineup is a good deal for the people inside. The brands ravers trust earned it the slow way, through academies, grants, art car slots and festivals that kept running long after any one campaign. Whether this year’s newcomers join them comes down to Ohta’s test: who is still paying into the scene once the show has wrapped and the album cycle is over.

Watch The Dare’s set from the Boiler Room x HBO’s Industry night below.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

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Share cards come in pairs. Fans get the first one when they’re selected for a Reserved offer and a second after they buy. Each card shows the fan’s name, the artist, the show details and Reserved badging, made to post on social platforms or send over messaging apps.

The setlist playlists are built from setlist.fm data and unlock on the ticket holder’s event page. Ahead of the show, the playlist reflects what the artist has been playing on recent tour dates. Once the show is over, it updates with the songs performed that night. Setlists will appear for participating tours as their dates begin.

The in-app destination pulls the share cards, setlists, event details, venue information and past performances into one place.

What is Spotify Reserved?

Spotify announced Reserved at its Investor Day on May 21. The idea: Spotify identifies an artist’s most dedicated fans and holds two tour tickets for them before the general onsale. The program went live in the US on June 18 in partnership with Live Nation, with tickets sold through Ticketmaster, and expanded to Canada on August 17, starting with Jonas Brothers dates.

In its Q2 update in August, Spotify said nearly 100,000 tickets had been reserved through the program. Recent offers have covered John Summit, Young Thug, Miley Cyrus and Metallica, along with Role Model and beabadoobee.

Spotify says its live music efforts have driven more than $1.5 billion in ticket sales for artists. It also says the top 2% of an artist’s monthly listeners, a group it calls “super listeners,” account for 50% of that artist’s ticket sales.

How to get a Reserved offer

Reserved is open to Spotify Premium subscribers in the US and Canada who are 18 or older. Premium Mini, Premium Lite and free trial accounts don’t qualify, and the account has to be at least a week old. Spotify chooses fans based on streams, saves, shares and location.

Selected fans see the offer on their Spotify Home screen and also get an email, a push notification and an alert in Your Updates. The purchase window typically lasts around a day, with two tickets held for the whole window. Tickets are reserved for the tour rather than a specific night, so fans choose the date, venue and seats at checkout, subject to availability.

Checkout happens on Ticketmaster. Fans may be prompted to connect their Spotify account to Ticketmaster to verify access, and Spotify suggests linking the two ahead of time. High-demand shows can put buyers in a queue before seat selection.

Unclaimed tickets pass to the next most dedicated eligible fans. A fan who declines an offer can’t request another one, though tickets may still turn up in the public sale. Reserved only covers first-sale tickets, with no resale.

For more on how the program started, read our coverage of the Reserved announcement from May.

Source: Spotify Newsroom

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At 130 BPM, ‘Inside The Brain’ moves between tech house and bass house. A dark groove sets the foundation while punchy percussion and a recurring vocal add tension throughout the track. The production keeps its melodic elements relatively restrained, placing more emphasis on rhythm and low-end weight.

For SCRIPT, that approach contrasts with some of the more melodic records scattered throughout his catalogue. His releases increasingly move across different sides of house music rather than following one consistent formula.

Franksy brings a similarly broad background to the collaboration. His 2026 releases include work with TCTS, Lee Foss and BUJA, Redlight, and GENESI and ESSENTIA. The projects have taken him through house and tech house while connecting him with a growing range of producers.

SCRIPT Expands His 2026 Catalog

SCRIPT opened February with ‘Headshake’ through AFFAIRS before collaborating with KREAM on ‘Turn Up The Dose’ in April. ‘London to New York’ followed in June, then ‘Activator’ arrived through Innellea’s Belonging imprint in July.

Together, those tracks show how much ground SCRIPT has covered this year. Melodic house and techno remain part of his output, but releases such as ‘Headshake’ and now ‘Inside The Brain’ give the producer room to explore harder rhythms and heavier production.

Franksy also arrives with an existing connection to TSZR. He previously appeared on the imprint alongside Us Two for ‘Simulation,’ making ‘Inside The Brain’ another addition to his work with the label.

The new track started surfacing in DJ and radio tracklists earlier in September. Its official release now gives listeners the complete version after that brief period of pre-release circulation.

‘Inside The Brain’ ultimately lands at an interesting intersection between the pair. SCRIPT brings the range that has defined his recent releases, while Franksy’s experience across house and tech house complements the track’s darker direction. Rather than pushing either producer into unfamiliar territory, the collaboration finds common ground in the heavier parts of their respective catalogs.

listen to SCRIPT & Franksy – ‘Inside The Brain’ below.

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That means hours of children’s music, movie soundtracks and that one song your kid insists on playing 75 times a day no longer have to completely hijack your year-end listening recap.

According to Spotify, managed accounts keep a young listener’s music activity separate from their parent’s account, allowing both to build their own listening history and recommendations.

Spotify even puts it pretty perfectly: “the days of schoolyard singalongs dominating your Wrapped are over.”

Honestly, parents everywhere just won Spotify Wrapped 2026.

Kids Get Their Own Spotify Experience

Managed accounts aren’t just about saving your Wrapped.

Young listeners receive their own personalized recommendations, including Made For You mixes and daylist, while parents and guardians retain control over what they can access.

Parents can restrict explicit content and specific artists or songs, while managed profiles are private and can’t be searched for or followed by other Spotify users.

And when Wrapped season arrives, kids get their own recap based on their listening, while Mom and Dad’s questionable music habits can finally speak for themselves.

Spotify has also expanded managed accounts beyond Premium Family. The company announced earlier this year that the experience is available through its free, ad-supported tier as well, opening the feature to more families.

Already Sharing an Account? There’s Another Option

For anyone who doesn’t want to create a separate managed account, Spotify already offers another useful tool: Exclude from your taste profile.

Users can select a track or playlist and tell Spotify to give those listens less influence over recommendations and taste summaries.

According to Spotify Support, streams from excluded tracks or playlists won’t appear in Wrapped stories or data points such as Top Songs or Top Artists, although they still count toward total listening time.

So yes, you can finally exclude the kids’ playlist.

Or your sleep playlist.

Or that guilty-pleasure song you absolutely do not need Spotify exposing to everyone on Instagram in December.

Your Wrapped. Your rules.

Check out Spotify’s managed accounts homepage and parental guide to learn more.

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Two Titans Lock in Their Sound

Armin Van Buuren and Pete Tong just dropped their massive new collaboration. They teamed up with standout vocalist Poppy Baskcomb to bring the vision to life. Taking on a legendary dance anthem is always a serious gamble. Dedicated clibbers are fiercely protective of their favorite nostalgic records. If you change too much, you alienate the purists but If you change too little, the track feels lazy. Yet, this powerhouse trio struck the perfect balance. The song honors its iconic roots while delivering explosive modern energy.

Pete Tong brings his signature Ibiza Classics sophistication to the arragement. You can feel that timeless orchestral grandness rinning beneath the groove. Meanwhile, Armin injects his unmistakable euphooric trance drive. The synergy between both veteran producers is evident throughout every section. The tension builds with relentless precision toward the primary breakdown. Sweeping filters and punchy snare rolls push the adrenaline higher. When the climax finally hits, it unleashes pure festival euphoria.

The Vocals

They brought in UK powerhouse Poppy Baskcomb for the vocals. Honestly, she absolutely crushed it. Her voice carries genuine emotion from the very first verse. It never feels like a cheap karaoke impression of the original topline. She gives an oconic hook brand-new life and serious-grit. Crisp precussion rolls smoothly into a warm, driving bassline. Poppy Baskcomb steps into the spotlight with a truley breathtaking vocal proformance. She nails every high note with effortless grace and power. Her voice glides over soaring pads and lush atmospheric synths.

The Verdict

It feels custom-built for massive open-air stages and dark club rooms alike. Modern reworks often fall into the trap of cheap festival shortcuts. This production aviods that completely. Every synthesizer layer breathes with incredible clarity and warmth.The track bridges golden era dance with contemporary mainstage energy. Both legeneds know how to craft music that stands the test of time. Except to hear this record dominating DJ sets across the globe this season.

This release proves that certain melodies will truley live forever. Blast your speakers and let this one take over your day on spotify here.

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As reported by Bloomberg, the billionaire tech entrepreneur, whose net worth is estimated at over $11 billion, argued that taxing unrealized wealth would force founders to sell off shares in their own companies, crippling startup innovation across the Nordic region.

Election Debates & Capital Flight Concerns

Lorentzon’s comments come amid intense political debate ahead of Sweden’s general election, where parties in the center-left opposition—including the Left Party and the Greens—have campaigned for new levies on billionaires and extreme wealth.

While Sweden abolished its previous wealth tax in 2007, the prospect of its revival has drawn sharp criticism from business leaders across the country.

“Yes, absolutely,” Lorentzon stated when asked if he would consider moving. “I would prefer to stay, but such a tax would mean I have to leave immediately… It benefits no one if entrepreneurs and job creators have to sell parts of their companies to pay tax. It would mean fewer companies, fewer innovations, less investment in areas such as environmental and climate technology, fewer taxpayers, and fewer shared resources for welfare. The tax is directly counterproductive.”

A History of Pushing Back Against Swedish Policy

In an opinion piece for Swedish daily Expressen, Lorentzon clarified that while he supports progressive income taxation, annual levies on net worth penalize illiquid assets. For tech founders whose wealth is tied up in company stock rather than liquid cash, paying an annual wealth tax often requires diluting their ownership stake.

This is not the first time Spotify’s leadership has clashed with Swedish policymakers. In 2016, Lorentzon and co-founder Daniel Ek published an open letter warning that strict housing markets, restrictive stock option tax policies, and red tape would force Spotify to expand its corporate footprint outside of Stockholm.

While Lorentzon’s warning specifically applies to his personal tax residency rather than Spotify’s corporate headquarters, it underscores growing anxiety within the European tech ecosystem regarding capital flight and founder retention. As of Monday morning, it appears that the left-wing parties, fueled by migrant votes, have edged out a collective majority in the election. Consequently, it appears likely this tax will come to pass and Lorezntzon will be leaving Sweden.

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And Playlist Notes aren’t just for Spotify’s editors—listeners can add their own notes to songs, podcasts and audiobooks inside playlists they create or collaborate on.

Spotify Editors Can Now Explain Their Picks

According to Spotify’s official announcement, editors can use Playlist Notes to explain why a track matters, provide cultural context or simply share why they felt it belonged in a particular playlist.

The feature is initially appearing across six editorial playlists: Today’s Top Hits, RapCaviar, Hot Country, All New Pop, mint and Fresh Finds Hip-Hop.

Users can tap Notes at the top of participating playlists to explore the commentary. Notes may also appear on the Now Playing screen, even when listening to the track outside the original playlist.

Meet the People Behind the Playlists

Spotify is also introducing Editor Profiles, giving its curators public-facing profiles featuring their top tracks, favorite albums and playlists they contribute to.

It’s a small but interesting shift. Editorial playlists can have a major influence on music discovery, but the people actually selecting those tracks aren’t always visible to listeners.

As Music Business Worldwide reports, the move also comes as Spotify continues to emphasize human curation alongside its growing investment in AI-powered music discovery.

Listeners Can Add Notes, Too

Regular Spotify users can also add notes to songs, podcast episodes and audiobooks inside playlists they own or collaborate on.

On mobile, users can tap the three dots next to an item, select Add note, write their message and save it. Anyone who can view the playlist can then see the note. The feature is rolling out on iOS and Android in more than 100 markets worldwide.

Spotify’s editorial Playlist Notes and Editor Profiles are initially rolling out to eligible Free and Premium listeners in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.

At a time when algorithms and AI increasingly shape music discovery, Spotify is putting a little more of the human element back into playlists.

And for those of us who take making the perfect playlist way too seriously, we finally get to explain our choices.

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The changes will begin rolling out in mid-September and apply to artist identities rather than individual songs. Profiles identified as AI-generated will receive an AI Persona badge, while Spotify will also use a “Likely AI Persona” label for accounts it determines represent artificial artists after human review. Artists will have the opportunity to appeal those decisions.

The new policy extends beyond labeling. By default, Spotify will exclude AI Persona accounts from editorial playlists and algorithmic recommendations, including personalized features such as Discover Weekly and Radio. Users will still be able to follow and stream AI artists directly, but Spotify will no longer actively promote them through its recommendation systems.

A New Approach to AI Transparency

Spotify says the initiative responds to growing listener concerns about AI-generated artist profiles presenting themselves as real musicians. The company emphasized that the labels apply only to an artist’s public identity, not to how the music itself was created. That means human musicians who use AI as part of their creative process will not automatically receive an AI Persona label.

The move follows months of debate surrounding AI-generated artists such as Velvet Sundown, whose rapid rise on streaming platforms raised questions about disclosure and authenticity. Spotify also plans to let listeners report artist profiles they believe represent AI Personas, adding another layer to its review process.

Spotify’s announcement also reflects a broader shift across the streaming industry. In 2025, Deezer became the first major platform to detect, label, and remove AI-generated music from its recommendation algorithms. Earlier this summer, Deezer reported that AI-generated tracks had surpassed 50% of all daily music uploads on its platform, underscoring the rapid growth of generative music.

The policy marks Spotify’s latest effort to distinguish authentic artists from AI-generated identities. Earlier this year, the company introduced its Verified by Spotify badge to help listeners identify genuine artist profiles. Together, the two systems aim to give listeners more context about who—or what—is behind the music they discover.

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The figure came from UMG CFO Matt Ellis on the company’s Q2 and H1 2026 earnings call on July 30. Ellis told analysts the company sold “just under one-third of our planned 50% stake sale” in the first half of the year, for gross proceeds of EUR €403 million. UMG confirmed the plan to sell half its Spotify holding on April 29, alongside its Q1 results.

How Much Artists Get

UMG has not published the percentage artists will receive, or a date for the payments. In April, Ellis said any payout would be consistent with the company’s royalty policies.

The closest thing to a number comes from Bill Ackman. In the April 7 letter to UMG’s board laying out Pershing Square‘s takeover proposal, Ackman valued the full Spotify stake at €2.7 billion and earmarked up to €750 million of it for artists, with €1.5 billion left for UMG after taxes and the artists’ share. That puts the artist portion at roughly 28% of gross proceeds.

The 2018 Clause Backing It

The commitment traces to Taylor Swift‘s 2018 UMG contract. Swift wrote at the time that she had asked for any Spotify share sale to result in “a distribution of money to their artists, non-recoupable.”

Non-recoupable means UMG pays out without first clearing an artist’s outstanding advance, so acts sitting unrecouped still see cash. Sony Music applied the same treatment when it sold half its 5.7% Spotify stake for $768 million in 2018. Warner Music Group sold its entire stake that August for $504 million and credited 25% to artist accounts, but did not set unrecouped balances aside.

On the dance side, the payout reaches UMG artists through imprints including Astralwerks, the electronic label distributed by Capitol Music Group.

Remaining Stake

UMG’s 2025 annual report listed 6,487,000 Spotify shares as of December 31, a 3.10% stake. Half of that, roughly 3.24 million shares, is what the company put up for sale, and just under a third of the program is done. That leaves UMG holding somewhere near 5.4 million shares. Spotify closed at $480.05 on August 4, which values the remainder at about $2.6 billion, against a 52-week high of $748.30.

On the buyback side, the company completed €485 million of the first €500 million tranche in July, and spent €250 million of the second authorization buying shares back from Pershing Square in June, after rejecting Ackman’s $64 billion takeover bid.

The post Artists Stand to Make Millions After Universal Unloads Spotify Stock appeared first on EDMTunes.

The distinction matters. Spotify has been clear that this isn’t a ban on AI-assisted music. It’s a response to what insiders are now calling “AI slop” – low-effort, low-quality tracks generated in bulk and dumped onto the platform with essentially zero creative intent behind them.

Why Spotify Is Cleaning House

According to Spotify senior director Sam Duboff, the core issue is scale. Text-to-song AI tools can now spit out a finished track in seconds, and bad actors have been using that speed to flood the platform with thousands of nearly identical uploads. Roughly 100,000 new songs land on Spotify every single day at this point, and industry estimates now put the share of AI-generated uploads at close to half of all new music hitting streaming services.

The economics behind the scam are straightforward. Every stream draws from a shared royalty pool, and fraudsters have figured out how to exploit that pool by uploading massive batches of generic ambient noise, fake meditation tracks, and repetitive instrumental loops under made-up artist names. Bots then generate artificial plays on these tracks, often parked in background or focus playlists where nobody’s paying close attention to who’s actually credited.

The money siphoned off through this process comes directly out of the pool that would otherwise go to working musicians. For independent artists relying on streaming income to make rent, that dilution isn’t just an abstract industry problem – it shows up in actual missed royalty payments.

What Spotify Is Actually Targeting

Spotify has repeatedly stressed that AI tools themselves aren’t the enemy here. Music made with AI assistance stays up as long as creators hold the proper commercial rights and are using the technology as part of a legitimate creative process. The enforcement is squarely focused on abuse of the system, not the technology itself.

To that end, Spotify says it’s beefed up its machine-learning detection systems to flag suspicious upload patterns and bot-driven streaming activity. The platform has also banned unauthorized AI voice cloning outright, meaning any track that mimics an established artist’s voice without permission is subject to removal. On top of that, Spotify has added new safeguards to stop third parties from scraping its catalog to train AI models without a licensing agreement in place.

The broader industry is pushing for more transparency around all of this. Groups including the IFPI and the RIAA have been advocating for clearer labeling standards that would flag whether a track is AI-generated, AI-assisted, or fully human-made. The argument is that listeners deserve to know what they’re streaming, and that transparency doubles as a layer of protection for artists whose work and likeness could otherwise get lost in the noise.

Spotify pulling 75 million tracks is a significant move, but it’s unlikely to be a one-time fix. As AI music generation keeps getting cheaper and faster, the pressure on streaming platforms to separate legitimate art from algorithm bait is only going to intensify.

[H/T] IOL

*Cover image credit: Jakub Porzycki

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