This might be the only way to stop the tsunami of musical AI slop
Depending on whom you ask, anywhere from 30,000 to 50,000 song uploads to Spotify are AI creations–slop, in other words. Other stream platform report more or less the same numbers. Deezer, for example, says that up to 50% of its daily uploads are AI in nature.
Why is this a problem:
- It’s crowding out music made by humans and are screwing up algorithms.
- Many of these songs are used to perpetuate streaming fraud. Millions of dollars are flowing to evil AI creators using bots and other nefarious ways to funnel royalties their way.
- It’s environmentally unfriendly. These tracks have to be stored on servers that consume tremendous amounts of energy. This junk is sucking up electricity.
So what can be done? Automatic and continuous database hygiene with AI detection tools. Stringent labelling of AI songs. But what about an upload fee?
As it stands, anyone can upload almost anything to streaming music platforms for free, or at least for very little. What if uploaders were charged a fee for the privilege?
This is the idea of ORCA, a music industry think-tank. I quote executive director Patrick Clifton: “It is time for upload fees to be instituted across the digital supply chain to disincentivize bad actors, as current approaches to the problem have not worked.”
ORCA thinks “an upload fee per track for new recordings that provides an economic disincentive to high-volume uploads… modelled to find the optimal track fee, accounting for the average return per track and any specific playback threshold on each DSP.”
Where would the money go? In the pool of money paid out as royalties each month.
A worthy idea, but it needs work. Clifton says, “All parties with a stake in this proposal will have their perspective and will inevitably bring to light downstream consequences we may not have considered.”
Hey, it’s at least worth a discussion, right?
