Spotify is publishing new, AI-generated songs on the official pages of artists who died years ago without the permission of their estates or record labels.
According to his official Spotify page, Blaze Foley, a country music singer-songwriter who was murdered in 1989, released a new song called “Together” last week. The song, which features a male country singer, piano, and an electric guitar, vaguely sounds like a new, slow country song. The Spotify page for the song also features an image of an AI-generated image of a man who looks nothing like Foley singing into a microphone.
Craig McDonald, the owner of Lost Art Records, the label that distributes all of Foley’s music and manages his Spotify page, told me that any Foley fan would instantly realize “Together” is not one of his songs.