AI-generated music is appealing to streaming services, not least because it could potentially eliminate royalty payments and boost profits. While providers such as Qobuz are distancing themselves from AI-generated music, Tidal and Spotify already have very lax AI policies. According to a report by the Financial Times, Spotify is now planning a full-scale AI push, set to launch as early as the first quarter of 2027.
The streaming market leader is apparently adding an optional AI package to its Spotify Premium subscription, reportedly costing $4 to $5 per month, which could make the service’s Premium subscription up to 39 percent more expensive. Those willing to pay these additional costs are expected to receive two main new features. First, the ability to have artificial intelligence regenerate existing songs as remixes. And second, the option to generate any song as a cover version by any band, thereby changing the song’s style.
I didn’t get it. Imagine the sales pitch here.
“Yeah we are going to make your subscription more expensive, but you’ll get more slop in return!”
Why?!
“Ai efficiencies will be passed on to the customer!”
Remember this next time billionaires say they’ll happily pay onto UBI or whatever.
This would get me onto Qobuz at least.
I’ve never spent a dime on music
Unless your music taste is made up of bland faceless corporate pop, I urge you to reconsider and support your favorite musicians.
Would visiting concerts count for that?
Excellent starter. Nowadays even legendary but non mainstream bands can only survive by touring and selling merch directly. Making money off records is viable only to artists who sell millions upon millions of copies
Still, find a direct way to buy a cd, vinyl, mc from that band. Show them you care.
There’s people willing to pay an extra to listen a butchered automatic cover of a song where Spotify probably doesn’t even pay royalties on that?
I thought the market would prefer the opposite: pay extra for a noslop guarantee, with a full monthlysubscription refund if a slop is accidentally inserted in a playlist
Well, gotta make all the AI cost back somehow. Most people are too comfortable to actually change anything, so they’ll just pay more
I already switched to Symfonium which streams my digital music library. Not ideal for discovering new music but its been working for me!
Time to violate their ToS again and download my Spotify library to my hard drive outside their app. Might switch to Qobuz permanently this time.
I don’t get it. I downloaded music on napster, then added kazaa files, then limewire files, then megavideo stuff along with youtube rips, and now i just download a song when I like it. Why did everyone else get these subscriptions? Dont you need internet to hear music? You dont own any of it…
Because too many people don’t respect their own time and corporations used this + ZIRP to turn the internet into a ad hellscape of conveniences.
Too much work and waste of storage space.
We don’t have good options for local music discoverability, and the major labels don’t have any incentive to even sell music to individuals in the first place anymore. I unfortunately pay for music streaming just because I don’t like listening to the same songs over and over. So to me the variety of new songs you can get from the algorithms on streaming services is worth paying for to me. Luckily, I don’t need to use Spotify, and just because they’re choosing to bundle an AI subscription in to their plans doesn’t mean all their competitors will too.
Tidal has been pretty good, I switched a few years ago
I think I might continue using it for music discovery only. For everything else music-related: https://mornye.com/ (mobile and desktop, pulls audio and metadata from multiple providers, rips FLAC and populates metadata, builtin player, syncs library across devices).
Of course, if an artist has bandcamp and I can buy singles I want, I’ll continue doing that as well.
Looks like I’ll have to not use Spotify even harder
Always surprised by music critics/industry types using their data as an indication of artist popularity. It has been generations since real music fans moved to a combination of piracy and directly supporting new artists with merch, vinyl and live shows. I suspect most spotify listeners aren’t music fans. It is just something they have on as the background soundtrack to their bland consumerist lives.
Loads of takeaways and cheaper restaurants use Spotify. Often free accounts, as you can hear it play ads.
Boycott them already. Stop paying them anything.
After the Helsing controversy I dropped them. I miss being able to play local files and better Japanese music coverage but I’m glad my streams are supporting the artists a little more.
Stopped using Spotify a while back.
It has served a great purpose at introducing me to so many artists over the years. But I’ve been sick of needing an online connection to a service for such a long time.
Now what I do is occasionally visit the playlists I created with hundreds of tracks on them to see what I want to download next over Soulseek, or find on Bandcamp.
Almost ready to host my own music, so I can finally drop Spotify as well
Spotify already sucks and is crammed full of ads. I mean Pandora may be mid but my ad-free tear remains ad-free. I miss when they were the Music Genome Project though.
