Spotify says its fight against low-effort, mass-produced audio is now showing up in what listeners actually hear. In a progress report posted to its newsroom on Tuesday (Oct. 20), the streamer said it has pulled more than 50 million tracks it classifies as “slop” or spam out of its recommendations this year.
That figure sits on top of a separate tally: more than 75 million spammy tracks that Spotify says it has taken off the service entirely for serious or repeated rule violations. Billboard notes that the 75 million figure was first disclosed in September 2025, when Spotify tightened its AI policies.
How the filtering works
According to Spotify, the push began when it examined the songs users were skipping, ignoring or flagging as unwanted, and found they overlapped heavily with material already identified as slop or spam. Over the following six months it reworked its recommendation systems, and its editorial teams now also avoid programming that content. The company says listener complaints on the issue have dropped noticeably since.
No single test is decisive, Spotify explained. It blends listener engagement and feedback, upload patterns, metadata and input from several third-party AI-detection tools, while watching for tactics such as bulk uploads, duplicate releases, SEO gaming, spam playlist networks and unusually short tracks.
“AI moves fast, and bad actors adapt just as fast.” — Spotify, in its Oct. 20 update
Badges, credits and profile controls
The report also gave fresh numbers on related tools. More than 300,000 artists now carry the “Verified by Spotify” badge introduced in April, and over 70% of them are independent. Thousands of acts are tagged with the “AI Persona” label, which keeps them out of editorial and algorithmic recommendations by default unless a listener chooses to follow them. Artists are filing tens of thousands of AI credits a day, and an Artist Profile Protection beta, which lets acts vet releases delivered under their name, is set to open to all artists by the end of the year.
Spotify added that its 1,000-stream royalty threshold, in place since 2024, is doing extra work: tracks with strong AI indicators are ten times more likely to fall below it. The same day, Believe signed on to license music for Spotify’s AI-powered remix and cover tool, joining Universal Music Group, Merlin and Kobalt.
Featured image: The Spotify app icon on a smartphone screen. Photo: Chris McGrath/Getty Images, via Billboard.