Controversy over fake artists on Spotify

Since 2016, Spotify has faced accusations from numerous publications, such as Music Business Worldwide and Vulture Magazine, regarding their practice of commissioning tracks and listing them under fake names on their music platform. Some allege that the practice exists in order to reduce the amount of royalty payments distributed to real recording artists. In December 2024, the specific initiative of Perfect Fit Content (PFC) was revealed in a report by Liz Pelly, a music writer and critic whose internal investigation regarding the matter, titled "The Ghosts in the Machine", was published in Harper's Magazine. Other publications have also since raised concerns about the growing amount of generative artificial intelligence in Spotify's playlists and on the service writ large.

Spotify has routinely pushed back against allegations of creating "fake artists" for the sake of listing their music on playlists. With regard to PFC, they have cited user demand for background music and have denied their intention to scale up anonymously created tracks to supplant independent musicians. Regarding the increased appearance of artificial intelligence content on Spotify, the company does not yet have a policy regarding the practice of artificially generating music but has, in the past, acted against AI-generated tracks.