_{By Zach Collier}

According to the Financial Times, Spotify is planning to let listeners make AI covers and remixes of songs – possibly as soon as early 2027. For independent artists, it’s yet another legitimate reason to worry about their art being buried alive under an avalanche of AI slop. Dead Internet Theory is no longer a theory. It’s h*ckin here.

This new feature would allow fans to change a song’s genre, arrangement, or vocals, and then share the result on Spotify. Notably, the sharing of these AI “creations” is limited to their platform and cannot be distributed off-platform (until, that is, someone figures out how to jailbreak it). The company is reportedly considering a $4 to $5 monthly upsell fee to listeners for the feature.

This looks like a way for Spotify to profit from the licensing issues that have landed AI music generators like Suno in court. Universal Music Group and Sony are currently suing Suno, alleging it trained its models on millions of copyrighted songs without permission. Corporate greed will be corporate greed, though, because Universal recently announced licensing agreements with Spotify for these AI remixes in the middle of the lawsuit. Apparently generative AI isn’t a problem as long as they get to profit from it, too.

With this news comes massive questions. Who controls each remix? How will revenue be divided? And will the artists whose music is being remixed actually benefit?

Spotify hasn’t disclosed the royalty rates or revenue splits for this new product. Fans may pay extra, and Spotify may gain a new subscription revenue stream, but there’s no public accounting of how much artists will receive. This is important, because musicians already know that having their songs used widely on social platforms doesn’t guarantee any meaningful pay (as our $5-a-month Meta checks indicate). It’s a well known maxim that you can’t eat exposure.

It’s also concerning that Spotify is negotiating these deals with major labels and not artists. A remix could be authorized through a label agreement while leaving artists with little say over what fans make or how much they earn from it. This is terrible news for artists trapped in tight contracts.

This also, once again, leaves indie artists out of the conversation entirely. We know that Spotify and other AI companies have been abusing antiquated anti-trust legislation to prevent indie artists from collectively negotiating fair pay for decades. What’s to stop them from opting everyone on the platform in automatically? Until an anti-trust law exemption passes in congress, indie artists are legally powerless to stop this through collective bargaining (and they’re functionally powerless from stopping it on their own).

Spotify may call this an opt-in feature, but the choice to opt out could get harder if remixes start driving attention and revenue. Artists may feel they have to participate, even if they don’t want AI versions changing how listeners hear their work. Artists were similarly pressured into joining streaming services and social media years ago – for, as it turns out, increasingly diminishing returns.

Spotify has done this sort of thing before. Their whole business was built from the ashes of file sharing sites like Limewire and the first failed streamer, Grooveshark. They built a “properly licensed” version of streaming through deals with the same labels that were actively fighting their competitors in court. The sanctioned industry shift to streaming killed physical mediums and forced artists into streaming. It seems like history is repeating itself with the Suno lawsuits and this new AI tool. It’s opportunistic and, while legal, ignores ethical concerns surrounding this technology.

Admittedly, this new feature has some appeal: fans get new ways to engage with songs, and artists might find new listeners because of the buzz generated by these remixes. But Spotify is also asking artists to trust a system whose economics and rights arrangements are not only unclear, but has actively screwed them over in the past.

Before the company sells AI remixing as some kind of win for musicians, it should show what musicians actually earn, and who gets to decide what happens to their work.

Until then, artists should consider working with organizations like The American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) to alter existing legislation that prevents indie artists from advocating for themselves. They should also consider supporting – or building – new alternatives to Spotify.

Because of the increasingly problematic nature of Spotify’s business decisions, Provo Music Magazine will no longer be embedding Spotify links at the end of articles. The original intent of these embeds was to help local artists generate algorithmic momentum on the world’s leading streaming platform. At this point, we don’t believe in the platform.

So please stream one of my favorite local releases, but do it below on the (currently slightly less evil) YouTube. Check out the music video for “Sway” by Allo Monroe.