Spotify to label AI music, filter spam and more in AI policy change (techcrunch.com)

Spotify updated its AI policy to require clearer, standardized disclosures about AI use in music and to strengthen defenses against AI-driven abuse. The company will adopt the industry DDEX metadata standard so labels, distributors and partners can encode granular AI credits (e.g., AI-generated vocals, instrumentation, or post-production) in track metadata. Spotify also clarified a strict ban on unauthorized voice clones and deepfakes, and announced a new music spam filter rolling out this fall to detect mass-upload, duplicate and SEO-manipulation tactics and prevent those tracks from being recommended. It’s also working with distributors to block “profile mismatch” fraud where uploads are falsely attributed to other artists. Spotify said 15 partners have already committed to the DDEX disclosures. For the AI/ML community and music tech ecosystem this signals a shift toward metadata-driven provenance and platform-side moderation. Standardized AI credits make provenance machine-readable, improving rights management, discoverability and research into AI’s role in production; meanwhile the spam filter and profile-mismatch checks underscore how generative tools amplify abuse vectors that recommendation systems must resist. Implementation will depend on distributor adoption and evolving signal sets (Spotify plans gradual rollouts), so expect a period of cross-industry coordination between metadata standards, detection models and platform policies.