Spotify is giving artists a new way to protect their profiles from AI deepfakes and misattribution.
The streaming platform is piloting a new opt-in feature that lets artists review and approve eligible releases before they go live.
The company says protecting artist identity has become “a top priority for 2026,” noting that “the rise of easy-to-produce AI tracks has made the [misattribution] problem worse” across streaming services.
Spotify’s new Artist Profile Protection feature — now in limited beta — has been designed to combat ongoing issues with misattributed releases, whether from metadata errors, artists sharing the same name, or “bad actors” who are “maliciously” attaching music to artists’ profiles.
The problem has affected artists across genres and career stages. Last year, AI-generated tracks with titles mimicking Tyler, the Creator’s Don’t Tap the Glass album flooded Spotify and TikTok ahead of its official release, with a fake version briefly holding the number two spot under the album name on Spotify.
Father John Misty and Jeff Tweedy were among a wave of Americana and folk artists targeted by AI-generated fakes uploaded to their profiles without consent.
And after King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard removed their catalog from Spotify last year, an AI-generated copycat called “King Lizard Wizard” appeared on the platform with songs using identical titles and lyrics before being taken down.
Spotify says that when this happens, “it can impact your catalog, your stats, your Release Radar, and how fans discover your music,” adding that more control over incoming releases has been “one of the top requests we’ve heard from artists over the past year.”
“Open-access distribution channels have lowered the barrier for independent artists to share music with the world, promote collaborations easily, and transfer music between distributors seamlessly,” says Spotify. “But that openness comes with gaps that bad actors can exploit.”
The streaming platform describes Artist Profile Protection as a “first-of-its-kind” solution, offering artists a proactive layer of control on top of existing reporting tools. Only releases an artist approves will appear under their name, contributing to their catalog, stats, and recommendations.
“This new feature builds on our reporting tools already in place, giving you proactive review and reactive reporting, so you have the chance to act both before and after a release connects to your profile,” says Spotify.
“Open-access distribution channels have lowered the barrier for independent artists to share music with the world, promote collaborations easily, and transfer music between distributors seamlessly. But that openness comes with gaps that bad actors can exploit.”
Spotify
The new pilot arrives a week after it emerged that Sony Music has asked streaming platforms to take down more than 135,000 songs it says were created by fraudsters using generative AI to impersonate artists on its roster.
Speaking at the launch of the IFPI‘s Global Music Report 2026 in London last Wednesday (March 18), Dennis Kooker, President, Global Digital Business & US Sales, at Sony Music Entertainment, said the “deepfakes” cause “direct commercial harm to legitimate recording artists.”
Meanwhile, in September 2025, Spotify revealed it had removed more than 75 million “spammy tracks” from its platform over the prior 12 months, as it announced a suite of new policies for managing AI-generated content on its service.
And rival platform Deezer recently disclosed that it was receiving approximately 60,000 fully AI-generated tracks per day — around 39% of all daily deliveries.
Artists who opt in will receive a notification when music is delivered to their profile and can choose to approve or decline it ahead of release. If a release is declined — or the artist takes no action — it won’t appear on their Spotify profile, though it may still go live on other streaming services.
The company says it’s best suited for those who have experienced repeated misattributions or have a common artist name.
To avoid slowing down legitimate releases, each artist will also be assigned a unique artist key — a code they can share with trusted distributors to enable automatic approval at delivery.
Artist Profile Protection is available on desktop and mobile web, with Artist Team Admins and Editors able to manage the settings on behalf of their teams.
Spotify is upfront that the feature “isn’t necessary for every artist,” and says it’s “best for those who are comfortable very actively managing their catalog.”
Notably, if an artist doesn’t take action on an incoming release, it will be blocked by default — meaning legitimate releases could be delayed if an artist forgets to respond.
The company also notes that declining a release on Spotify doesn’t prevent it from going live elsewhere. “The release may still go live on other streaming services besides Spotify, so you may still want to notify your label or distributor,” the announcement states.
Spotify describes the current beta as an early version, noting that “what you’ll see in Spotify for Artists is not the final, full functionality.” The company says it plans to roll the feature out “to all artists as soon as we possibly can” following the beta period.
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