Mashable Selects Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more In My Bag Look Up Creator Playbook Say More AI at School Safety Net Versus Trending Now Back to School Good Connection: Uplifting stories for a digital age All Series 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. This Tweet is currently unavailable.

Bad actors have been uploading fake songs onto real artist's pages on Spotify and other platforms, according to a report by 404 Media. The scheme is fairly simple. They use generative AI to whip up slop songs and then take advantage of a distribution loophole to insert them directly onto a pre-existing artist's catalog. The loophole even gives them access to proceeds generated from the tracks, as the money does not go to the original artist. The payout is also likely to be much higher than with typical AI slop, as the fake track is co-opting an artist's name and profile page.

Just because you have to listen to "Let It Go" for the zillionth time while driving your kids to school doesn't mean it should dominate your Spotify Wrapped. The streaming service is adding a new toggle option for users to exclude certain kids or family songs from affecting your music recommendations, like nursery rhymes, TV show theme songs or musical hits from animated movies. Within the settings panel, there's now a new toggle labeled "Include kids and family music in taste profile" that will change what shows up in your Discovery Weekly, Daily Mix or Wrapped. Like the Explicit content switch, Spotify has a note that says it could "take up to 48 hours for these changes to be reflected in your personalized recommendations." However, activating the kid and family music toggle will also work retroactively, meaning that all the relevant music you listened to this year can still be wiped away from your annual Wrapped recap.

Want to Get Off Your Phone? "I think that's been the most helpful thing," says the ESPN journalist. "So there you go, Zoomers. There's a reason to have children." I just got it replaced because I cracked the screen with my car. I was resting it on the roof and it slid down as I was opening the trunk, and it was a real crime scene. When you bring a cracked phone to an Apple store, you know that they've seen everything, but you still feel deeply ashamed.

Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Look Up Creator Playbook Mashable Voices Trending Now Say More Mashable Selects Safety Net Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Switch Off In My Bag All Series Is this the next big thing in music? Phone-free concerts and Spotify's events are giving young fans an increasingly rare opportunity to connect in person. 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.

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.

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.