Why Spotify has no button to filter out AI music

An important development from the financial markets: Why Spotify has no button to filter out AI music27 April 2026 Share Save Add as preferred on GoogleZoe CorbynTechnology Reporter, San FranciscoGetty ImagesOn some music streamers it's not clear if you are listening to AI musicIn mid-2025, frustration boiled over for Cedrik Sixtus. Finding his Spotify playlists increasingly sprinkled with tracks he suspected were AI generated, the Leipzig-based software developer built a tool to automatically label and block them from his listening. He uploaded his Spotify AI Blocker to a couple of code-sharing websites, where hundreds have downloaded it.

It filters out a growing list of more than 4,700 suspected AI artists, drawing on already existing community tracking efforts, and signs like unusually high release volumes and AI-style cover art, supplemented with external detection tools. "It is about choice – if you want to hear AI music or if you don't," says Sixtus who would prefer Spotify labelled and enabled filtering of AI-generated content itself. Sixtus's tool is installed initially via the web browser version of Spotify.

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He warns that using his software "may violate Spotify's terms of service". He isn't alone: feelings run deep on the community forum of the world's most popular music streaming service. While for Sixtus the issue is that AI music doesn't sound right, others simply don't want to listen to music made by a bot.

Spotify has made some concessions to address such concerns. In April it launched a test feature which shows, in a song's credits, how an artist used AI. But it's a voluntary system based on what an artist tells their record label or distributor.

"We know this isn't a complete solution on its own. Building a truly comprehensive system is a challenge that requires industry-wide alignment," Spotify said in April. Spotify's position is certainly a long way from actively identifying AI-generated music and giving users an option to filter it out.

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"It is a difficult – borderline existential – balancing act for Spotify," says Robert Prey, who studies streaming platforms at Oxford University's Internet Institute. Spotify is trying to avoid value judgments about how music is created, but risks eroding trust among listeners, artists and the wider industry if it fails to offer enough transparency, he explains. "It has to figure out what listeners want and how artists feel – all while AI is improving, being used more widely and becoming harder to detect," he adds.

The arrival of AI tools for music is both seducing and unsettling the music world. Generative AI music services like Suno and Udio now produce increasingly polished, fully realised songs, complete with lyrics, vocals and instrumentation from simple text prompts in seconds. In one recent controlled test, part of a Deezer–Ipsos poll, 97% of listeners failed to correctly distinguish between AI-generated and human-made tracks.

Financial markets are tracking the development closely as investors assess the likely impact.