When a new song called “Together,” attributed to country singer Blaze Foley, appeared on Foley’s Spotify profile last year, something didn’t seem right. For starters, he has been dead for more than two decades, the cover art featured AI artwork of a man who wasn’t Foley, and the tune wasn’t uploaded by the late singer-songwriter’s longtime distributor.
In recent years, fake tracks have shown up on various artist profiles, including easy-listening act The Sweet Enoughs and the Australian metal bands Alpha Wolf and Thy Art Is Murder. Smaller artists are not safe either, with musician Catherine Brennan taking to TikTok and reporting: “In the past two weeks, I’ve had two albums released under my name that are not mine.”
Spotify on Tuesday unveiled a new effort designed to prevent these incidents from happening. The streaming giant’s Artist Profile Protection service allows artists more control over the content that appears under their names.
While sometimes the error might come from bad actors, it can also be the result of less nefarious things like metadata mix-ups or confusion over artists with the same or a similar name. Regardless of the reason, artists can now prevent it altogether with Spotify’s new feature.
“We know how frustrating this can be for both artists and fans alike, and one of the top requests we’ve heard from artists over the past year is that you want more visibility before music appears under your name,” Spotify said in a press statement.
How it works
Artist Profile Protection is in limited beta testing now and will allow participating artists to opt in for a review step before content goes live on their profile pages. As of now, Spotify says it has invited a few thousand artists to test the feature, with plans to scale it in the coming months.
Artists who turn on the feature will be able to accept or decline releases on a dashboard in their Spotify for Artists account. Upon approval, a track will go live on a chosen date, appear under the artist’s profile, and contribute to their statistics. If an artist declines, the track won’t be released.
The feature is intentionally optional, as not every artist may benefit from it and it may delay or block legitimate releases.
“Artist Profile Protection isn’t necessary for every artist, but it could make sense if you’ve experienced repeated incorrect releases, have a common artist name, or want more control over what appears on your profile,” Spotify said.
Additionally, artists will be provided with a unique code, or “artist key,” that they can use to preapprove a track that’s being uploaded to the service, thereby skipping the approval step.