Spotify artist pages can be hijacked with AI-generated music by anyone paying a distributor a few dollars a month, which 404 Media’s Emanuel Maiberg showed by putting a Udio track on the verified page of Brooklyn punk band Lathe of Heaven. He signed up with Distrokid for $3.75, typed the band’s name, and the service matched it to the real profiles and took his checked boxes claiming the rights at face value, as did the streamers, and a day later the song was on Apple Music, Tidal, Amazon Music, and Deezer too. Scammers work the same loophole to collect royalties from people who think they’re streaming the real artist, and Spotify says pages nobody actively manages are the easiest marks, which is how dead musicians end up with new releases.
