The Washington PostThe Washington Post

AI music brings the sound of scammers to Spotify

By Lionel Laurent

11 May 2023 · 3 min read

Editor's Note

Writing in the Post, Lionel Laurent highlights a growing problem for streaming services. Machines are listening to music that other machines helped create—and making real money in the process.

"Mahogany Flex," "Afternoon Nap" and "Tropical Taste" sound like bad cocktail ideas that never made it past the napkin stage. But they're just a selection of the musical styles offered by artificial-intelligence app Boomy, which conjures up ready-made tracks for users in a matter of seconds - and which has become the latest target of record labels' fight against "fake" music.

The industry's issue with Boomy - which claims to have helped create 14.6 million songs, or 14% of all recorded music - is somewhat different to the sneaky deepfakes directly ripping off the likes of Drake and the Weeknd with chilling accuracy.

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