I keep ending up with AI music in my playlist when exploring for me music. What is your workflow to avoid it? Searching DDG for me has been more bandwidth intensive than I like…
Some background. My favorite song is a song I haven’t heard yet. And my appetite sways wildly. One month it’s old school urban rap, the next it’s kpop, and then Nordic death metal and so on.
I never know what I’ll be in the mood for but I’ll find a thread with a song I don’t know and use it to build play lists to see what I find and sometimes I find trash gems that way.
This last time our friend group watched Eurovision 2026 together and some of those songs are bangers. One of them led to adding a few artists built off of playlists from that song I really liked, and they all ended up being AI… damnit!
Don’t use Spotify, they actively try to put AI shit into your playlist so they have to pay less royalties. Not sure how scumbaggy other services are.
YouTube music is what I’m using, add them to your list of scum please.
I think I read that Qobutz at least tries to work against AI music.
How would they pay less royalties? That AI music is still being uploaded by someone.
Spotify generate it themselves
My answer is - buy music. Not only because that way you’ll get actual human works of art by real musicians who you like, but also because that way they stand a chance of actually being able to make a living so they can, y’know, make more music.
By not updating my music taste for the last 15 years
Music peaked right around the time I was 20.
That may be when you stopped actively seeking new music. There are loads of amazing new artists in every genre. There is so much good new stuff coming out its hard to keep up.
Yep this is an effect of its own, forgot the name though.
Be warned that all styles of music are getting AI inserted into them.
Your method works as long as you never use an algorithm to mix your playlist, but as soon as you do, you’re likely to get an AI track inserted into your ears, even if it’s 70s classic rock.
The answer is stop using streaming services. The AI problem will only get worse as people keep paying for these services because what CEO is okay paying an artist a premium when they could instead generate slop and sell that for the same price? Buy your music on Bandcamp or sail the seas, just stop using Spotify.
This. Streaming services are doing to music what Lars Ulrich thought Napster would do.
Cancel Spotify if that’s what you use. I’ve been happy with Tidal.
Certainly not a magic bullet tho. I tend to not listen to a lot of new music so I don’t give the slop much of an opening.
Can’t help you with music but I share your frustration when it comes to being suckered into consuming AI slop. My entire adult life, text to speech has been a constant part of my day, so I pride myself on being able to sniff out when the person talking isn’t a person.
Even with these AI voices I’ll eventually catch an odd stutter or wonky prosody, but it may take a good minute or more of listening, and when I do figure it out I feel like I’ve been scammed.
By checking out the Ukrainian metal band IGNEA.
By not letting an AI choose what you hear.
Seems pretty obvious, really.
Are you using Spotify ?
Because they are mainly known for 2 things:
- they are nazi cunts who platform nazi cunts and play ads for nazi cunts
- they flood their library with slop as a way to funnel money to themselves rather than to legitimate artists.
I’m not aware of a streaming service completely free of slop, but I know some like Qobuz are actively detecting and removing it.
I’m not, I’m using YouTube music which isn’t much better. I’m still looking for another platform to use but so far I need multiple to get all the music I like in one place.
Though I’ve considered buying CDs again and ripping them for local storage…
+1 for Qobuz. Seems like an ethical company. They pay artists 4x Spotify rates too.
Can you elaborate on that first point please?
They ran ICE ads and only stopped because the campaign ended, not because of massive backlash: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/09/spotify-no-longer-running-ice-recruitment-ads-after-us-government-campaign-ends
They hosted and donated to the orange shitstain while disproportionately targeting “controversial” black artists: https://www.themarysue.com/spotify-supporting-donald-trump-is-horrifically-hypocritical-after-how-theyve-treated-controversial-black-and-brown-musicians/
They pay hundreds of millions to nazi propagandists for the exclusive rights to spread their hate: https://apnews.com/article/joe-rogan-spotify-deal-76fa0e2c9d4b137f510428528ea6226b
The CEO stepped down to make AI weapons with Peter thiel : https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2025-07-31/spotifys-ceo-owns-an-ai-weapons-company-some-musicians-say-its-time-to-leave
Bamdcamp took a stand against blatant slop but will allow artists to use some generative methods in their music.
Tbf some generative methods are cool and foster creativity, like modular synthesis.
There’s nothing wrong about using randomness to get your creative juices flowing. People have been using card decks, dice, Euclidean rhythms, sample and hold and so on for a long time (Andrew Huang has a lot of examples of tracks where the main instrument, theme and genre are randomly picked). I guess sanitized, corporate slop could be used the same way, as long as the artist is fully in control of the creative process. For me the line stops where slop is used as is, with no human creative input.
