I keep ending up with AI music in my playlist when exploring for me music. What is your workflow to avoid it? Searching DDG for me has been more bandwidth intensive than I like…
Some background. My favorite song is a song I haven’t heard yet. And my appetite sways wildly. One month it’s old school urban rap, the next it’s kpop, and then Nordic death metal and so on.
I never know what I’ll be in the mood for but I’ll find a thread with a song I don’t know and use it to build play lists to see what I find and sometimes I find trash gems that way.
This last time our friend group watched Eurovision 2026 together and some of those songs are bangers. One of them led to adding a few artists built off of playlists from that song I really liked, and they all ended up being AI… damnit!
Are you using Spotify ?
Because they are mainly known for 2 things:
- they are nazi cunts who platform nazi cunts and play ads for nazi cunts
- they flood their library with slop as a way to funnel money to themselves rather than to legitimate artists.
I’m not aware of a streaming service completely free of slop, but I know some like Qobuz are actively detecting and removing it.
Can you elaborate on that first point please?
They ran ICE ads and only stopped because the campaign ended, not because of massive backlash: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/09/spotify-no-longer-running-ice-recruitment-ads-after-us-government-campaign-ends
They hosted and donated to the orange shitstain while disproportionately targeting “controversial” black artists: https://www.themarysue.com/spotify-supporting-donald-trump-is-horrifically-hypocritical-after-how-theyve-treated-controversial-black-and-brown-musicians/
They pay hundreds of millions to nazi propagandists for the exclusive rights to spread their hate: https://apnews.com/article/joe-rogan-spotify-deal-76fa0e2c9d4b137f510428528ea6226b
The CEO stepped down to make AI weapons with Peter thiel : https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2025-07-31/spotifys-ceo-owns-an-ai-weapons-company-some-musicians-say-its-time-to-leave
+1 for Qobuz. Seems like an ethical company. They pay artists 4x Spotify rates too.
I’m not, I’m using YouTube music which isn’t much better. I’m still looking for another platform to use but so far I need multiple to get all the music I like in one place.
Though I’ve considered buying CDs again and ripping them for local storage…
Same boat here. YouTube music and AI songs being more common. For right now if I hear someone new I check to see if they had an album before 2025… This method won’t be viable for much longer.
Bamdcamp took a stand against blatant slop but will allow artists to use some generative methods in their music.
Tbf some generative methods are cool and foster creativity, like modular synthesis.
There’s nothing wrong about using randomness to get your creative juices flowing. People have been using card decks, dice, Euclidean rhythms, sample and hold and so on for a long time (Andrew Huang has a lot of examples of tracks where the main instrument, theme and genre are randomly picked). I guess sanitized, corporate slop could be used the same way, as long as the artist is fully in control of the creative process. For me the line stops where slop is used as is, with no human creative input.
Easy … I don’t download it.
Related bands are less likely to be AI than cold searches. You can also check to see if they have any social media influence, AI bands are unlikely to have any live clips
I’m doing those and they’re still getting in. But I don’t look to see if they have a presence until I’ve decided I want to know more about the band…
Definitely research them! Don’t just stop at a single song, find out what country they came from and who their influences are. You’ll start to piece together a mental map of the various bands you know, as well as discovering new bands that way.
I feel like I’ll need to do this every time I discover someone new…
I usually add new songs to one of my many themed playlists (platform of choice) then research more once I start to recognize them. Sometimes I get tired of them before then and just remove them.
If your kick is new music than you should just switch languages and listen to stuff pre 2022.
I listen to a ton of foreign language music. The 2022 piece would help but it won’t last for me. Young people are always coming up with new sounds and I love that!
Yeah and many of them are using AI to do it.
Given your genre flexibility, there is nearly infinite music out there from well before the was any question about it being human-made. You could easily listen to songs you’ve never heard back to back for the rest of your life without coming close to running out of old music.
For modern stuff you’ve basically got to see video of them performing live to be sure.
Sadly that’s what it feels like it’s coming too. But I don’t just want to support artists of a given age…
I know. I want my cake and eat it too.
The video might be AI too.
By checking out the Ukrainian metal band IGNEA.
Pretty sure I’m adding everything they’ve published to my playlist! Currently listening to Incurable Disease at an unhealthy level and cannot get enough.
Thank you again!
Thank you! Listening to Dreams of Lands Unseen right now. Instant add to my playlist.
I built up my own personal library through the years that I will probably still be working my way through in 10-15 years, when I find something I like in it I search out more
Thank you. And pretty much what I’ve been doing. But lately…
I guess I did one thing right and had the foresight to do that over the years lol, but yeah it’s rough now. Soulseek is still around :) then I usually use Bandcamp if I wanna buy things
Thank you!
By not updating my music taste for the last 15 years
Be warned that all styles of music are getting AI inserted into them.
Your method works as long as you never use an algorithm to mix your playlist, but as soon as you do, you’re likely to get an AI track inserted into your ears.
I only sub to Deezer, a French streaming service that actively filters AI music and blocks it from their algorithms and search results.
Pretty much what every one of my friends have done. My kids were a great source in their late teens / early twenties. But as they’ve gotten older now they pretty much listen to the same stuff.
No, I’m not going to have more kids.
Music peaked right around the time I was 20.
Yeah, same.
That may be when you stopped actively seeking new music. There are loads of amazing new artists in every genre. There is so much good new stuff coming out its hard to keep up.
What platform are you on? I haven’t experienced this in Apple Music but I often listen to the same stuff rather than going down discovery holes.
I’d second this question - I use a lot of bancamp and so far it seems pretty ai-free
YouTube music…
I’ve tried to leave them before but I haven’t found a single platform that has more than 60% of the content I like that isn’t worse (Spotify for example).
I like the odd music so much from small creators I’d hate to lose it.
Seems like there are a few threads like this from 2025 where they just tell users to submit feedback but no way to block it yet it seems.
Probably more effective to cancel your account and tell them why you’re cancelling rather than sending feedback though 🤷♂️
I’m looking for another service right now that has enough of the music in my playlist to swap and do just this.
Plus it’s a family plan so a little extra sting.
But then I have to teach my mom the new service… I love her. But maybe not that much 😂♥️
Buy real CDs from artists I see play in person. Or CDs of artists that are long dead.
CDs are key, streaming random tracks you have no clue what you will get.
I’ve been considering this and ripping them like it’s 1996…
Check out your local thrift store and your local library theyre gold mines for physical media to rip the only other thing you’d need is a disc drive
By getting old.
I don’t purposely listen to anything made after 2015.
i only listen to music from bands that have existed since long before ai music became a thing
Cancel Spotify if that’s what you use. I’ve been happy with Tidal.
Certainly not a magic bullet tho. I tend to not listen to a lot of new music so I don’t give the slop much of an opening.
+1, I’ve been very happy with Tidal for years now. I go down discovery holes fairly often and have yet to come across anything AI. It does a good job of vibe matching what I wanna hear.
Plus the audiophile quality is very, very nice if you have the equipment!
Tidal lacks about a third of the music on my playlist. They have all the big artists but miss a lot of the small ones…
when was the last time you checked that? if you can toss me two or three artist names I can see if they’re on there now
A year or so ago when I found out how little YouTube pays artists. It would be hard to figure out which ones were missing but I’ll take a look again and see how it is this weekend when I check out Apple music.
Don’t use Spotify, they actively try to put AI shit into your playlist so they have to pay less royalties. Not sure how scumbaggy other services are.
YouTube music is what I’m using, add them to your list of scum please.
I think I read that Qobutz at least tries to work against AI music.
How would they pay less royalties? That AI music is still being uploaded by someone.
Spotify generate it themselves
All AI work is public domain, but also, its thought that Spotify themselves likely create some of that AI content - although I’m not familiar enough with Spotify to confirm that myself.
It can be presumed that Spotify is doing that to some degree. There is consensus amongst scientists studying the field, artists, labels and other people in the field about that.
The public domain thing is kind a useless argument at this point; It is the case law we are building upon currently but that’s basically just because haven’t gotten a broader legal framework yet and we’re still making AI fit into what we have.
But we don’t have to answer by citing to the law, we can answer by looking at the ethics and expecting the law to loosely follow our ethics - that’s what it is designed to do.
- AI takes ideas from other artists without giving credit
- AI is trained on art without paying for it
- AI can use other artists branding and likeness without their consent
- artists make less because AI takes an increasingly bigger cut of the revenue (it’s kinda zero-sum, but let’s skip that conversation)
- AI music can only exist because artists exist, SE we need to keep paying artists enough to keep working
- AI might is possibly being used in some instances for money laundering
And so on.
I’m trying to say this because the law is there to follow our feelings. If we structurally don’t condone something to a certain level as a society, we make it illegal or we regulate it.
And as you can see, there’s plenty of reasons to regulate and some are straight up financial, so we definitely should do something about it.
And with “we” I mean specifically the Republicans and Democrats, the FCC (regulation to combat market disruption), judges, civil rights lawyers, and possible plaintiffs all have the chance to push us into a better position societally.
Shoutout to Bernie Sanders, he’s trying to start a movement about it, and as always he’s ahead of the curve in Congress.
Try ,No AI DDG or https://radio.garden/ or. https://monochrome.tf/
Qobuz has seemed to stay on top of generated music for me so far even with recommendation playlists.
