Spotify AI Spam Tracks - “75 Million Songs of Artificial Nonsense” - 2025 AI Darwin Award

Fraudsters exploited AI music generation tools to upload 75 million spam tracks to Spotify in one year, nearly matching the platform's legitimate 100 million song catalog. The scheme leveraged Spotify's royalty system that pays for streams over 30 seconds, flooding the platform with AI-generated meditation music, ambient tracks, and deepfake celebrity impersonations. Spotify responded by developing AI-powered detection systems to combat AI-generated fraud while attempting to distinguish legitimate AI music from spam, creating a recursive challenge where algorithms fight algorithms while human artists see their royalties diluted.