24/09/2025
The music business has been eating itself for years, but now something uglier is moving through the gates: automated artists, algorithmic extraction and legal language that quietly hands platforms new powers. This isn’t a fever dream. It’s a slow, structural cannibalism—streaming services taking in the creative flesh and spitting out microscopic fractions of value while technology trains itself to replace the producers of that value.
Spotify recently updated its legal language and developer rules in ways that matter. Their policies now explicitly forbid outsiders from scraping Spotify content to train AI models, but at the same time they’ve carved out frameworks that allow the company to use the massive amounts of data it already controls to build its own AI features. That means Spotify can block others while centralizing its own machine learning projects. For artists, this is a warning shot. The data you generate is being turned into fuel for systems that don’t necessarily have you in the picture.
You’re already seeing signs of it. AI-generated tracks, fake releases, and virtual “alien” artists are slipping into catalogs. In some cases, entire songs have appeared on official artist pages with no human involvement. Bands like Massive Attack have pulled their music in protest, citing both ethical and economic reasons tied to these changes. What this creates is a messy environment where cheap synthetic music is dumped into the same pool as your blood-and-sweat work, diluting attention and confusing fans.
The lie most artists swallow comes dressed up as “you keep 100% of your royalties.” Distributors like DistroKid repeat that line as if it means you’re getting the full value of your music. But all it really means is they pass along what the platforms decide to pay them. The tiny slice of revenue trickling down to you is already split by labels, publishers, collection societies, taxes, bank fees and the broken payout model itself. So yes, you keep 100%, but only of what’s left after everyone else has eaten. The pie is small by design.
When you zoom out, it looks like cannibalism. Platforms control distribution and data. They use that position to experiment with AI music that costs next to nothing to produce. They flood the same platforms with cheap, quick output. Meanwhile, the already fragile payout model gets stretched thinner until real artists can’t breathe. The system is literally feeding on its creators while training their replacements.
The darker scenario is easy to imagine: a world where live gigs are shut down by another crisis, where festivals are canceled, and the “stars” beamed into your living room are AI idols generated in under two hours by prompts. That’s not proven fact—it’s a worst-case projection. But the present trends make it feel less like a dystopian fantasy and more like a logical next step if artists don’t fight back.
I’m not writing this for validation, or to rack up likes and follows. I’m writing because I’ve dug into what’s happening and I see where it’s headed. AI is already creeping through the gates of the music industry, and it’s not slowing down. Until rules are rewritten, until artists demand transparency and push for ownership, humanity will keep sliding toward a subordinated role in its own creative culture.
This is the time to wake up. Protect your work. Diversify beyond streaming. Build direct-to-fan connections and claim every piece of money tied to your music. Don’t swallow the “100% royalties” line without asking 100% of what. Don’t assume that the platforms working on AI will stop at “tools to help you.” They’re building competitors, not assistants.
I’m laying this out plain because ignorance looks a lot like consent. Decide what kind of future you want to work toward. If we stay quiet, platforms will keep rewriting the rules. If we act, we can create alternatives that reward real people again.
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