Spotify is starting to close a gap that’s been sitting in plain sight for a while. As AI-generated music continues to scale and more songs get incorrectly attached to artist profiles, Spotify is testing a new feature called Artist Profile Protection. It’s opt-in, and it gives artists the ability to review and approve releases before they go live under their name.
That might sound small, but it’s addressing something bigger. Distribution has become so open that almost anyone can upload music globally with very little friction. That’s been great for access, but it’s also created a system where identity isn’t tightly controlled. Songs get misattributed. Duplicate names get mixed up. And now with AI, people can generate music at scale and attach it to existing artist profiles without permission.
This isn’t hypothetical anymore. Sony Music Entertainment recently asked platforms to take down more than 135,000 tracks it says were created using AI to impersonate artists on its roster. At the same time, Spotify itself said it removed over 75 million “spammy tracks” in a single year. And Deezer is now seeing around 60,000 fully AI-generated songs uploaded every day, which is close to 40% of all new music hitting the platform.
That’s the environment this feature is walking into.
Up until now, most of the system has been reactive. Something goes wrong, the artist flags it, the platform investigates, and eventually it gets taken down. The problem is that by the time that happens, the damage is already done. Streams have been counted, recommendations have been affected, and in some cases, money has already moved.
This flips that. Instead of cleaning it up after the fact, Spotify is letting artists approve what hits their profile before it ever shows up. If you opt in, you get notified when something is delivered to your page, and you decide whether it goes live.
Of course, there’s a trade-off. More control means more friction. If an artist doesn’t approve something in time, even a legitimate release could get blocked. Spotify is trying to balance that by introducing an “artist key” system, where trusted distributors can bypass the approval step and keep things moving. But zooming out, this isn’t really about a feature. It’s about where the system is breaking.
Streaming platforms were built to handle volume. Now they’re dealing with volume plus velocity. AI has made it possible to create and upload music faster than the system was designed to verify it. And once identity gets blurry, everything downstream gets affected — discovery, payouts, even an artist’s reputation.
That’s why this matters. For a long time, the focus was on access. Make it easier to upload. Make it easier to distribute. That worked. But it also created gaps. And now those gaps are being exploited at scale.
What Spotify is doing here is starting to rebuild control into a system that was designed to be open. Not by locking it down completely, but by giving artists a layer of ownership over how their identity is used. It’s not a full solution. But it’s a signal. Because the next phase of streaming isn’t just about getting music onto platforms. It’s about proving that what’s there is actually real.
