Why Is It So Easy to Flood Streaming With AI Slop?
And what the hell is Operation Clown Dump?
My cursor was hovering over the button. I’d just had a conversation with John Ross, a friendly acquaintance of mine, about something weird that happened to him recently. On DSP artist pages for his band Wild Pink, there appeared a song called “Vibe Check.” Wild Pink’s album covers look appealingly homespun. This one featured a queasy-slick image of a few bottle-service DJs camped out high in the hills above L.A. The music could be described as Minor Lazer: vaguely Caribbean rhythms, weak-ass synth horn breakdowns, an uncanny-valley voice delivering lyrics about partying “till we can’t feel our legs.” Ross didn’t make “Vibe Check” and didn’t know who did. It sounded nothing like Wild Pink. It seemed like an obvious AI scam, but he didn’t understand exactly how someone had managed to force it onto his streaming profiles. He wondered: Should I change my Spotify password?
That probably wouldn’t help, I told him. I’d been recording our interview, as is my usual practice as a journalist. A few days later, I opened my account on DistroKid, the service I use to distribute my own songs to streaming, which costs me $3.75 a month. I uploaded the interview audio. I chose Wild Pink as the artist name. When DistroKid pulled up Ross’ artist photo and the name of his most recent album, asking me whether this was the Wild Pink I was looking for, I responded in the affirmative. I typed in “John Talks AI Slop Takeover” as the song title. I checked the boxes at the bottom of the form reading “I recorded this music, and am authorized to sell it in stores worldwide & collect all royalties,” and “I’m not using any other artist’s name in my name, song titles, or album title, without their approval.” And I hovered my cursor over the button that read “Continue.”
I didn’t click it. (John, if you’re reading this, I promise, I was never going to.) If I had, there’s a decent chance this 11-minute lo-fi spoken-word opus would have appeared on Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, YouTube, and elsewhere as Wild Pink’s new single. If you’ve noticed this happening a lot lately, it’s because in many cases, it really is that easy—no hacking or even password entry required. A host of metalcore bands had their artist pages vandalized by fake AI songs last year. Jeff Tweedy’s old band Uncle Tupelo got hit in June, the popular EDM duo Odesza in January. Art-pop innovator Sophie and Texas country cult hero Blaze Foley both had suspiciously AI-sounding new material posted to their pages recently—odd choices of artists to target, considering that Sophie died in 2021 and Foley in 1989. Presumably, the motivation for the scam is financial: When I chose Wild Pink as the artist for “John Talks AI Slop Takeover,” that didn’t stop me from claiming myself as the songwriter and owner of the recording. Were it to become a runaway streaming hit, any associated royalties would be directed to my bank account, not Ross’.
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