Not too long ago, Spotify’s “pretend artist” downside, first noticed way back to 2017, has been a subject of dialog but once more, with a playlist of 49 nearly equivalent songs from totally different artists making the rounds on the web. And no, this isn’t a snarky jab about how all pop music is constructed on the identical normal ideas; these songs look like comparable variations of the identical piece of poorly produced music, every differentiated by random adjustments in pitch.
Between its gargantuan measurement and anemic royalty payouts, Spotify has not often been with out controversy. As a veritable kingmaker working, allegedly, by the invisible hand of the music market, makes an attempt to mine the service for cash are nothing new. Generally giant firms are suspected of such habits, together with Spotify itself (which it staunchly denies). Intelligent artists have additionally deployed tongue-in-cheek stunts to try to recreation the system, which is broadly seen as being brutally unfair to indie musicians. Not too long ago, songs from no-name artists have been discovered to bear hanging similarities to 1 one other. They’re clearly the identical piece of music, beginning the identical method and utilizing the identical melodic motifs, although the album artwork, artist title, and base pitch of every model varies.
On Twitter, media producer Adam Faze shared an odd discovery, collating 49 seemingly equivalent songs right into a public Spotify playlist titled “these are all the identical music.”
One fast hear and, yeah, there are shades of distinction, largely when it comes to pitch. However these are undeniably all the identical music.
As many identified in Faze’s replies, all of it sounds just like the product of low-effort generative music methods and even AI productions—and, no, not the extra respectable, exploratory form that composers, digital musicians, and visible artists have experimented with for years.
One other odd quirk of the songs present in Faze’s cursed playlist is that every monitor options equally styled, weird,inventory photos for the album artwork.
It will additionally appear that this phenomenon will not be unique to Spotify. As musician Zoë Keating found, Apple Music additionally appears to have pitch-shifted renditions of classical music attributed to fake artists.
Kotaku has reached out to Spotify and Apple for remark.
Whereas nearly anybody can add music to streaming providers with one thing like a Distrokid account, Common Media Group has lately referred to as on Spotify to take a stance in opposition to AI-generated music that lifts the likeness of established artists to create new music. As with AI-generated visible artwork, nevertheless, these issues aren’t prone to fade away.
