After reading a quick headline regarding Spotify’s application for the patent of a technology to help protect songwriters’ works, we decided to research the news further.
Initially intrigued, and happy that songwriters’ fruits of labour would be protected, the story started to unravel.
All this is unofficial, as there is no specific announcement from Spotify, but here’s what we discovered from various sources.
The technology is a form of AI that analyses “tracks” for pluralities/similarities, based on registered works, that are registered via the creation of a lead sheet.
Isn’t this wonderful? So far, yes.
We subsequently discovered Spotify had been exposed for building playlists from fake artists, managed by a company that Spotify had financial interests in.
How does this relate? There is speculation that Spotify’s AI could analyse original music, in its quest to protect the rights of songwriters, and then from the collection of this vast, harvested information, use the same AI to create its own versions of said analysed music.
With this AI generated “music” (which is already a creation), could Spotify create more fake artists, (possibly virtual artists), then generate and promote playlists containing predominantly their own AI generated music?
This would then bypass the need to distribute royalties among the genuine artists, that the AI was originally/supposedly created for.
It’s a possibilty.