Spotify pulled 50 million AI slop and spam tracks from its recommendations

Spotify has also made changes to its music recommendation system to highlight songs from human artists.

Emma Roth

Oct 20, 2026, 2:18 PM UTC

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

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Emma Roth

is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.

Spotify says it has removed more than 50 million songs considered AI-generated slop or spam from user recommendations over the past year. That’s according to anannouncement on Tuesday, which says Spotify has also made changes to its recommendation system to highlight more music made by human artists.

“Our editors hold the same standard and don’t program content identified as slop or spam,” Spotify says. “Since we made these changes, we’ve seen a marked decrease in listener concerns about this content showing up in recommendations.”

Though Spotify hasstopped shortof mandating labels on all AI tracks,it launched an “AI Persona” badge for artiststhat use an AI identity and don’t represent a real person. It also won’t recommend music from AI personas. Other music streaming platforms are taking a tougher stance on AI music, withYouTube Music putting labelson AI songs,Deezer giving users an optionto filter out AI slop, andBandcamp banning AI music entirely.

AI music is flooding streaming services — but who wants it?

Spotify says it uses a combination of listener engagement and feedback, upload patterns, metadata, and third-party AI detection tools to determine whether a track may be AI-generated slop. Last year, the company said it took down more than75 million songs identified as spam. It’s also partnering with Universal Music Group and theindependent music publisher Believeto launch a tool forcreating AI music remixes.

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