It's no secret that Spotify is the dominant player in the music streaming market, with 293 million paid subscribers and 761 million monthly active users across both paid and free tiers. Along with massive market dominance has come a fair bit of controversy in recent years. As the biggest music-streaming platform, Spotify is usually the first mentioned in the discussion about whether artists are fairly compensated for their work. The math around that question is obvious -- buying a digital album outright typically costs between 10 and 15 depending on where you buy it, while a Spotify Premium subscription costs 13 a month in the US. Fair pay is far from the only drama surrounding Spotify, though.

Spotify has been teasing its upcoming AI tool that lets fans make covers and remixes for a while now, even unveiling a partnership with Universal Music Group. The streamer just announced another partner for the endeavor, the indie music publishing company Kobalt. This company publishes songs by a wide range of musicians, from Phoebe Bridgers to the post-punk outfit IDLES. Kobalt artists will soon be able to opt-in to Spotify's upcoming platform that lets fans repurpose songs to make remixes and covers. This is, of course, done via a suite of AI tools.

'I feel like I'm at war': are we losing the battle against machine-made music? This year, the battle for song of the summer has been eclipsed by a much more complicated - some would even say disturbing - debate. That's because we find ourselves asking not "What's the song of the summer?" but rather "Is the song of the summer even?" Among the top contenders for the title is Fenix Flexin's Rubberz, a single released in June that has ascended to No 58 on the Billboard Hot 100 and racked up more than 35m Spotify streams. The artist is known for his trap music as part of the rap duo Shoreline Mafia, but Rubberz is a mildly noirish, 80s-inspired synth-pop track featuring a voice nothing like his.

'I was blown away' - the fans who heard Phoebe Bridgers' unreleased album in a planetarium Image caption, Lost Weekend is Phoebe Bridgers' first solo album in six years What happens when a Grammy Award-winning artist, one of the most anticipated albums of the year and a planetarium collide? This week the small city of Armagh found out. It's been six years since songwriter Phoebe Bridgers last released an album, so the release of Lost Weekend on Friday marks, as The Guardian says, a long-awaited return, external . Since her last record, the critically acclaimed Punisher, she's recorded and toured with Grammy Award-winning supergroup boygenius, as well as navigating grief after the death of her father. And now, in the days leading up to Lost Weekend's release, she's giving a handful of fans an immersive audio-visual experience at planetariums across the world. Only two venues in the UK - Glasgow and Armagh - were chosen to take part.

Image caption, The changes are being introduced to give listeners more transparency about what they're hearing, Spotify says Spotify is introducing a new feature that will highlight if an artist has been generated by artificial intelligence (AI). The streaming service says the AI Persona badge, that will start appearing on some profiles from mid-September, will flag to listeners if an artist's identity may be AI-generated and does not represent a real person. The changes are being introduced to give listeners more transparency about what they're hearing, Spotify says. It comes after some music fans made it clear to the streamer they don't like seeing a profile that seems to be a human, to then realise it's AI-generated. AI-generated music has long been a concern for users of the platform.

Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Look Up Say More Creator Hub Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Mashable Selects Versus Switch Off Trending Now Safety Net In My Bag VidCon with Mashable All Series Spotify will now tell you when an artist isn't real The new AI Persona badge will flag synthetic artist identities and keep their music out of recommendations by default. Olivia Tauber is the deputy editor of digital culture, covering creators, media, movies, beauty, and more. Based in New York, her work has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Cut, Teen Vogue, Complex, and Interview Magazine. She holds a Master's degree in Journalism from NYU and a Bachelor's from the University of Michigan. She also runs Fan Mail, a weekly pop-culture newsletter.

AI-generated artists will be labelled as an'AI persona' on their profile, in search and in track listings. AI-generated artists will be labelled as an'AI persona' on their profile, in search and in track listings. Music streaming platform creates'AI persona' label that will appear on profiles and track listings in crackdown on fake performers Spotify is to label AI artists and exclude them from algorithm recommendations as part of a crackdown on fake performers. The world's largest music streaming platform is creating a label for AI-generated artist identities called "AI personas" that will appear on the artist profile and on track listings on playlists. It means that from next month AI-generated artists such as the Velvet Sundown will carry the persona label and will be blocked from personalised recommendations by default.

Spotify announced that it will begin labeling certain artist accounts that aren't real people. The new AI Persona badge will add a level of transparency to music profiles that present themselves as human despite being generative AI creations. Accounts can declare themselves to be AI Personas beginning August 11 via the Spotify for Artists portal. Spotify will also use a mix of human checks and AI-powered reviews to apply a Likely AI Persona badge to artists it believes aren't real. The account is will be alerted if the tag is applied, and artists will have an appeal process if they receive the badge erroneously.

FIFA's World Cup Halftime Show Puts American-Style Spectacle on the World Stage Organizers want the show to be the most-viewed halftime show in history. Having Shakira, Justin Bieber, Coldplay, and BTS will surely help--but do soccer fans want it? It was all Chris Martin's idea. During the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the Coldplay frontman called Hugh Evans, the CEO of Global Citizen, for whom he curates the Global Citizen Festival, with something new to pitch. "Wouldn't it be incredible," Evans recalls Martin saying, "if we could do the first-ever halftime show for the World Cup?"

Follow this author to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW? Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens. Watching TikTokkers Kaniyia Brown and Terry McCaskill react to hearing new (or not-so-new) songs for the first time is a positively visceral experience. As they listen to music by artists from Luke Combs to Celine Dion to Zara Larsson, they might clasp their hands over their mouths or stare wide-eyed into the camera, or maybe they'll shimmy in their computer chairs and whoop along to a particularly catchy beat or melody.