Spotify Removes 50 Million AI Slop Tracks from Recommendations This Year

Spotify‘s quest to curb the chaos AI-generated music has brought onto the platform has caused it to remove 50 million AI slop tracks from users’ recommendations this year, a new figure shared Tuesday as part of the company’s public insights into how it’s navigating the AI era.

The disclosure came in a post on its “For the Record” blog, where Spotify laid out the efforts it’s taken since it promised to push back against various forms of AI slop and spam that have proliferated across the streaming service. The 50 million tracks the streamer removed from recommendations were in addition to more than 75 million tracks Spotify pulled completely after being flagged as spam, though tracks that comprise the 50 million figure have not been removed from the platform. According to Spotify, the 50 million AI-generated tracks are still available but a user would have to actively seek them out to find them (since they aren’t recommended algorithmically or editorially). “Earlier this year, we looked closely at the tracks listeners were skipping, ignoring, or telling us they didn’t want to hear,” the platform shared in the post. “A clear pattern emerged: these tracks were consistently ones identified as slop or spam. Over the past six months, we’ve made numerous updates to our recommendation system to remove slop and spam, and surface more music made by authentic, human artists. Our editors hold the same standard and don’t program content identified as slop or spam. Since we made these changes, we’ve seen a marked decrease in listener concerns about this content showing up in recommendations.”