Spotify posting AI-generated songs of dead artists without permission, new report revealsSpotify has been posting AI-generated songs attributed to dead artists without the consent of their estates or rights holders, a new report by 404 Media reveals.
Over the weekend, a track titled Together was uploaded to the Spotify page of Blaze Foley, an American country singer-songwriter who died in 1989. The song, which the article describes as sounding vaguely “like a new, slow country song”, was accompanied by an AI-generated album artwork featuring a male singer who “looks nothing like Foley”.

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Craig McDonald, who runs the record label responsible for distributing Foley’s catalogue and managing his official Spotify page, says he never thought that an AI-generated track could appear on Foley’s page without his permission. He also tells 404 Media that fans of the musician would immediately recognise Together as a fake.
“I can clearly tell you that this song is not Blaze, not anywhere near Blaze’s style, at all,” he states. “It’s kind of an AI schlock bot, if you will. It has nothing to do with the Blaze you know, that whole posting has the authenticity of an algorithm.”
McDonald adds that the incident is “harmful to Blaze’s standing” and places the blame squarely on Spotify.
“It’s kind of surprising that Spotify doesn’t have a security fix for this type of action, and I think the responsibility is all on Spotify. They could fix this problem,” he argues. “One of their talented software engineers could stop this fraudulent practice in its tracks, if they had the will to do so. And I think they should take that responsibility and do something quickly.”
In response, Spotify says it had “flagged the issue” to the song’s distributor, SoundOn, and has since removed the track for violating its “Deceptive Content policy”.
Still, it appears that Foley’s episode was not an isolated case. 404 Media traced the upload of Together to a company called Syntax Error – whose name also appears in the copyright section of another now-removed Spotify track: an AI-generated song attributed to Grammy-winning country artist Guy Clark, who passed away in 2016. That song, titled Happened To You, was uploaded just last week and likewise featured an AI-generated image of someone bearing no resemblance to Clark.
At the time of writing, Spotify has not addressed the existence of Syntax Error or how it was able to upload songs under the names of deceased artists.
The controversy comes amid a wider wave of AI-generated music slipping through the cracks of streaming services. Just recently, a ‘band’ named The Velvet Sundown managed to rack up over a million Spotify streams before revealing that all their music, including vocals, had been generated entirely by AI.
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