All the latest in AI ‘music’

Spotify says it has removed more than 50 million songs considered AI-generated slop or spam from user recommendations over the past year. That’s according to an announcement on Tuesday that says Spotify has also made changes to its recommendation system to highlight more music made by human artists.

“Our editors hold the same standard and don’t program content identified as slop or spam,” Spotify says. “Since we made these changes, we’ve seen a marked decrease in listener concerns about this content showing up in recommendations.”

If you spend any time on r/synthesizers or watch a lot of synth videos on YouTube, you’ve probably noticed the explosion of custom firmware for hardware synthesizers, samplers, and grooveboxes. What unites almost all of them is that they were made possible by increasingly sophisticated vibe-coding tools.

These sorts of custom firmware were exceedingly rare in the pre-LLM days and required both deep expertise and an incredible investment of time. It could take weeks or months to add a simple feature like velocity sensitivity to a Korg Volca. Now, hobbyist hackers are able to turn Temu synths into full-fledged grooveboxes in a matter of days.

YouTube is adding a “Made with AI” label to tracks that were “altered or fully generated” using AI, with a similar approach to its existing process for applying AI labels to videos. It doesn’t sound like this will apply to any and all use of AI tools in making music, but according to YouTube, it includes things like “using a generative model to create the composition and vocals.” In its rules for music partners who upload their songs, YouTube lays out how to disclose generative AI use, and says that if there’s no disclosure, it may use “other signals” to decide if a song is AI-generated.

The label is rolling out starting today in the YouTube Music app, and expanding to the main YouTube app later.

Artists are taking to social media to complain that DistroKid has unceremoniously removed their work without notice. Now DistroKid has confirmed to The Verge that the takedowns are a direct response to claims made by UMG. The label filed a lawsuit in September claiming that DistroKid has created an “AI-slop pipeline.” Artists are saying that their non-AI works are being caught up in the purge, however.

Musician and self-described “Video Game boy” McGwire reported that six of his songs had been removed from streaming. As has been the case with others, McGwire says that there was no communication from DistroKid before or after the removals, and that he had to contact the company for an explanation.

Music startup Thoughtful Things has just launched the Kickstarter campaign for its first instrument, Engram. It’s a sampler and groovebox that uses AI to mangle incoming audio and even hallucinate completely new sounds. This isn’t Suno in a box, though. This isn’t a “push-button, get-song” device, aimed at creating something that sounds ready for top-40 radio. It’s about creating experimental, uncanny sounds and pushing AI audio models beyond their limits.

Engram isn’t connected to the internet. Instead, it runs a “tiny AI” locally. According to the Kickstarter listing, the model is designed in-house and custom-trained. The company says:

Sony and Universal Music Group filed yet another suit against Suno. The labels claim its new v6 model still infringes on their copyrights because it’s trained on user outputs from previous models, which were themselves trained on unlicensed music ripped from YouTube and other sources. Sony and UMG are notable holdouts who did not sign a licensing agreement with Suno.

In its complaint shared with The Verge, Sony and UMG accuse Suno of “model laundering,” saying:

Lunacy, purveyor of fine VST plug-ins like Cube, a synth that you control by moving a ball around a 3D space, has just launched Nova, a platform where creators can build custom music tools using AI and sell them to others. At first, there will be a handful of instruments available, built either by Lunacy or a small selection of partner developers. But eventually, the company will launch Nova Builder, which will let anyone build their own plug-ins or remix existing ones.

There are 10 plug-ins available initially, covering everything from crunchy chiptunes to warbly vintage synths and evil ambient drones. None of them do anything particularly unique, but they all sound pretty solid. The lo-fi Drift Cassette synth and Silhouettes are my two favorites right off the bat. The former gets you nostalgic ’80s tones, while the latter is all about sci-fi soundscapes. They all have pretty simple interfaces reminiscent of Native Instruments’ Play series, with bright colors and a handful of controls.

It’s not quite the “push button; get song” of Suno, but Roland’s new Melody Flip tool marks the company’s foray into generative AI music. Available as a plug-in for your digital audio workstation (DAW), Melody Flip offers around 250 “Palettes,” which are essentially themed collections of musical ideas sorted by genre. You can start from scratch and ask it to generate any combination of melody, chord progression, bassline, or drums. Or you can feed it a reference track and have it build off the melodic ideas from that.

Unlike Suno or Udio, Melody Flip doesn’t spit out fully polished songs with vocals and full arrangements. Instead, it offers simple musical loops meant to serve as a creative spark for you to build on. There are fairly limited control over the outputs. You can’t feed Melody Flip a text prompt like “acoustic country rock with clean male vocals, literate singer-songwriter, gentle brushed drums, and sparse pedal steel at 98BPM” and get a Jason Isbell ripoff. Instead, you basically just choose a genre, note density, BPM, musical key, and take what you get. Though the genre options are pretty fine-grained, going from standard fare like “80s disco” and “90s R&B” to esoteric things like “Kawaii Future Bass” and “Anime World.”

Suno is releasing Studio 2.0 with significant upgrades that push it closer to an actual digital audio workstation (DAW), rather than a bare-bones audio editor with generative AI features. The biggest addition is undoubtedly MIDI support. Suno says that MIDI was its most requested feature, and it’s basically a prerequisite for any modern DAW. Unfortunately, Suno Studio doesn’t appear to support third-party plugins or VSTs yet, so you’re stuck using its proprietary built-in synth. That synth appears to be a basic two-oscillator wavetable plugin with three envelopes and four LFOs.

The point is less about using your favorite Arturia vintage synth emulation, though, and more about using that MIDI data as a prompt. You can play in some chords, then ask Suno to turn that MIDI into audio, extend a melody, or write a B-part based on what you played. Another standard DAW feature being added in Studio 2.0 is automation. So now you can pan or change the volume of individual tracks across the arrangement.

After weeks of controversy and speculation, music company D’Addario has admitted that AI, specifically Suno, was used as part of a recent promotional video. For nearly two weeks, the company has denied the allegations, even as evidence piled up against it. It offered various explanations, from low-quality exports, to combinations of plug-ins like Autotune introducing digital noise, and the use of AI-assisted mastering tools from LANDR and Logic. But now the company has edited its original Instagram post denying the use of generative AI to say it was wrong.

In a lengthy update to its post from July 29th (embedded at the bottom), it said:

Spotify will soon label AI artists and remove their music from your recommendations. The change, which will start rolling out in mid-September, means you’ll see an “AI Persona” badge on an artist’s profile across the app if they do “not represent a real person.”

The music streaming platform will allow artists to disclose that they’re an AI persona starting today, but it won’t rely solely on self-identification. Spotify says it will use human review and AI tools to determine whether someone’s profile, including their name and image, “appears to represent photorealistic AI-generated identities.” If Spotify determines that an artist’s identity may be AI-generated, it will apply a “Likely AI Persona” badge. Spotify will review artists who meet “defined audience thresholds” first to cover the profiles people listen to the most.

It took long enough, but now LA rapper Fenix Flexin appears to have admitted using AI for the 80s synth pop-themed song “Rubberz.” His comments follow the producer Medasin’s videos claiming that an AI tool called Treblo (formerly Sonauto) was used to make the song, and the company releasing an AI detector that identifies it as Treblo AI-created.

In a reply to a comment pointing out that Tyga admitted to relying on AI for his own controversial ’80s-influenced album $tarface, on one of his Instagram posts, Fenix said:

Suno announced plans to implement a new watermarking technology and download policy to limit the spread of spammy AI tracks and increase transparency. In a lengthy blog post, CEO and co-founder Mikey Shulman laid out the company’s principles and the next steps for the company as it seeks legitimacy.

The company is rolling out new transparency tools, along with new watermarking and fingerprinting tech. Shulman says it aligns with “emerging industry standards” that will make it easier to identify Suno-generated content. He also says the company is aiming to partner with “distribution platforms on combatting fraud and misuse.”

We were pretty sure that Fenix Flexin’s “Rubberz” was made using AI, but musician Medasin was confident that it was made using Treblo specifically. Now the company and a new detection tool seem to confirm it.

On Monday, the company announced the open-source Treblo AI Music Classifier, which detects when a song was generated using Treblo, though not other AI tools. According to a blog post, it has a false positive rate of less than 1 in 10,000. That’s not unimpeachable, but it’s notable that the company’s own Classifier determined that “Rubberz” was “very likely Treblo” with “high confidence,” adding more fuel to the PR nightmare for Fenix.

Fender CEO Edward “Bud” Cole gave an interview to T3 in May celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Telecaster with comments on AI and music that initially flew under the radar. But it has started making the rounds recently, pouring more fuel on an already raging fire of bad PR following the company pissing off basically the entire guitar-playing community by sending cease-and-desist letters to builders, claiming copyright of the Stratocaster body shape.

Some influential guitar YouTubers have even said they’re done buying Fender gear in the wake of the controversy. And Cole’s resurfaced comments comparing cover songs and bandmates to a sort of “analog AI” have only sunk the company’s standing further among the loudest of its fans online.