Spotify plans to roll out a subscription add-on, costing $4-5 monthly on top of regular fees, that lets users remix songs with AI and upload the results to the platform, according to the Financial Times. Royalties would flow to original artists, and remix plays would count toward the source tracks' chart performance, with artists able to veto use of their music even if their label has signed on. Spotify has reportedly secured deals with Universal Music Group, Merlin and Believe, while talks continue with Sony Music and Warner Music.
techspot.com
· 2026-11-02
A roundup identifies five Spotify settings—covering audio quality, content recommendations, and privacy—that remain in default states for many users but can noticeably change the listening experience. Most of these options are limited to Spotify Premium subscribers and can be adjusted through the app's settings and privacy menu on mobile or desktop.
engadget.com
· 2026-11-01
Users seeing low-storage warnings may find Spotify high on their device's storage list, often due to downloaded music and cached data rather than the app itself. Both iOS and Android offer built-in menus to check per-app storage use, and Android allows clearing an app's cache separately from its stored data.
engadget.com
· 2026-10-31
French streaming service Qobuz says it has been gaining subscribers by emphasizing human-curated playlists and editorial selection, even as it faces a wave of AI-generated audio uploads like other platforms. Dan Mackta, the company's Managing Director, declined to use the term "AI music" to describe these tracks.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-10-23
Spotify has updated its recommendation system to filter out over 50 million songs it classified as AI-generated spam or low-quality filler. The change aims to prioritize music made by human artists when suggesting tracks to listeners.
gizmodo.com
· 2026-10-20
Deezer announced a new on/off switch that will let users completely remove AI-generated tracks from their streaming experience, set to roll out by the end of 2026. CEO Alexis Lanternier said the feature responds to clear user demand to focus only on content made by human creators. Deezer says AI-generated tracks now make up more than 50 percent of uploads to its platform, up from 18 percent last year, with about 90,000 AI tracks uploaded daily.
engadget.com
· 2026-10-14
DistroKid confirmed to The Verge that it has been taking down musicians' songs as a direct response to a September lawsuit from UMG accusing the platform of running an 'AI-slop pipeline.' Several artists, including musician McGwire and rapper Insane Ian, say legitimate, non-AI tracks were removed without prior notice, and that getting an explanation required lengthy battles with automated support.
theverge.com
· 2026-10-10
Michael Smith of Cornelius, North Carolina, was sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to forfeit over $8 million after pleading guilty to wire fraud conspiracy. Between 2017 and 2024 he used 1,040 bot accounts to generate hundreds of millions of fake streams of AI-generated songs uploaded under fictitious artist names on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube.
techspot.com
· 2026-10-08
Michael Smith, 54, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to forfeit $8 million after pleading guilty to wire fraud conspiracy. Prosecutors say he created up to 10,000 fake accounts to stream hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs billions of times between 2017 and his 2024 arrest, spreading plays across many tracks to avoid detection. In one example cited by the Justice Department, his bots generated 80.9 million fraudulent family-plan streams in April 2023, compared with 9.3 million for Taylor Swift's entire catalogue that month.
thequietus.com
· 2026-10-08
Spotify experienced a widespread outage on September 29, 2026, with user reports on Downdetector peaking at over 19,000 complaints during the morning. By early afternoon, the number of reported issues had dropped sharply, though more than 1,000 users were still reporting problems as of 1:07 PM ET.
androidauthority.com
· 2026-09-29
Winamp Group has announced plans to relaunch Winamp in 2027 through a partnership with Deezer, bundling its player with Deezer's streaming catalog and licensing infrastructure. The revival will introduce Winamp's first-ever paid subscription tier, promising a customizable interface, social features, and new music discovery tools, though pricing and supported platforms remain undisclosed.
engadget.com
· 2026-09-20
A Reddit user analyzed their extended Spotify streaming history for a 2,000-song playlist and found a 72-track sequence played in the exact same order on two consecutive days. The repetition occurred even with the 'Fewer Repeats' setting enabled and without changing devices or playlists. Other users report similar patterns, including one case where 27 of 30 upcoming tracks matched a prior queue.
androidauthority.com
· 2026-09-08
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