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.
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.
Lol, why would anyone pay for slop? I wouldn’t accept this even if they paid me. I like my music exactly the way the artist made it, that’s why he’s an artist after all. Damn morons at Spotify…
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
Exactly, I would have thought you might have some AI only free/cheaper tier. At least that kinda makes sense as a use case, not that I could see myself ever paying for it
Well, gotta make all the AI cost back somehow. Most people are too comfortable to actually change anything, so they’ll just pay more
Cackles maniacally in Plex lifetime pass and self hosting
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.
One weird trick, install Soulseek.
Why would you pay for AI generated music, surely that has less value to people?
Like I don’t even totally hate the existence of AI generated music. But it isn’t worth anything to me. I can prompt it in seconds. If I wanted some kind of background music generator it would work for that, but I don’t see how that is worth any non zero amount of money.
I quit Spotify when they signed Rogan, but I remember its early days fondly - it used to have a free and open API. You could get visualisers, lyrics, BPM analysers for DJs, Last.fm integration… what a prime example of rampant enshittification.
I’m not sure I understand.
Can you pay extra to not get AI slop music?
That’s coming up next for an extra $20.
Looks like I’ll have to not use Spotify even harder
Spotify is screwed, SaaS companies are going down due to AI.
Then I plan a 100% cancellation
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 for some time spotify was cheap, easy and useful so people were happy to pay
it’s fast become less of each of these and relies more on playlist lockin
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.
“Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem.”
When they first came onto the scene, streaming services offered a fairly cheap and convenient way for people to listen to whatever music they want whenever they want. Prior to this music piracy was widespread because the alternative was paying $10 at tower records for each album or, a little later, $1 per song on iTunes. People didn’t pirate music because they cared about owning a copy for themselves, they just didn’t want to deal with the expensive and inconvenient alternatives.
Rising subscription costs, increased AI slop, etc may usher in a new Renaissance of music piracy similar to what we’re seeing with TV/Movies.
And also, it takes ages to skip between songs, because I have to wait for the stream to load. On my local music player, I can flick between them almost instantly until I hear one I like. And shuffle doesn’t repeat the same 20 songs, apparently YouTube Music and Spotify cannot implement proper shuffle, it’s too intense of an engineering task.
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.
This would get me onto Qobuz at least.
Welcome to the club, there are dozens of us in here already! The water is warm and the sausages are mostly coocked through
/me waiting for the additional charge on top of that they’ll offer in exchange to flick a “no AI” switch.
