After debuting in New Zealand last month, Prompted Playlists are now available to Premium subscribers in the US and Canada. The feature lets you build a customized playlist using AI prompts, describing exactly what you want to listen to.
In a lawsuit spotted by Aftermath, Sega claims that someone with the username Ziodyne uploaded the Persona 3 Reload and Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey albums to Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon before the company had a chance to offer them on the music streaming services.
Sega accuses Ziodyne of receiving “significant revenue and profits from his unauthorized sales” of its music, and is seeking $60,000 in damages, Aftermath reports.
The band was one of the higher-profile acts to leave Spotify over Daniel Ek’s war profiteering. But its songs briefly reappeared in the guise of an AI clone. An act called King Lizard Wizard uploaded seemingly AI-generated songs with the same names and lyrics as the real deal. That ran afoul of Spotify’s policies against impersonation and the songs were removed. In a statement provided to Australian site The Music, frontman Stu Mackenzie said he was:
“Trying to see the irony in this situation... But seriously wtf we are truly doomed.”
Spotify shared its methodology on how your Spotify Wrapped is made in a new blog post. More than 200 million people engaged with this year’s Wrapped in “the first ~24 hours alone,” CEO Daniel Ek said.
When everyone who’s gonna subscribe is already subscribed there’s one easy way to keep earnings going up and to the right: raise prices. It’s already happened in Europe, and now it’s coming to the US. What cost $9.99/mth at launch 14 years ago is now $11.99, and soon will cost… we’ll find out before March is done.
[Financial Times]
In September, the band announced it would remove its catalog from Spotify due to Daniel Ek’s investment in military AI technology. That appears to be easier said than done. But in 2026, it will begin releasing music on a new label, and the group said it will be available digitally — just not on Spotify.
A spokesperson tells Variety that the integration will arrive in the “coming weeks,” allowing users to go back and forth between listening to a song and watching the music video. Spotify brought music videos to countries outside the US last year with support for select artists, including Charlie XCX, Doja Cat, Ed Sheeran, and others.
Spotify hasn’t launched a native app for Amazon’s new Vega OS yet, so Amazon built a clunky workaround for the first Fire TV stick running Vega.
Premium users can ask the AI feature for music suggestions in Spanish and type out descriptions of what they want to hear, in addition to the existing support for verbal English-language requests.
The only human-made element behind Xania Monet’s act appear to be the lyrics.
Every Friday, Spotify will release “The Drop,” where its editors highlight the latest in music in a series of scrollable, vertical video clips. You can find the new series on the app’s homepage or by searching “The Drop Weekly.”
