When Stick Figure's six-year-old song shot up the charts, the band was thrilled. But its viral moment was spurred by unauthorized AI remixes. The California-based reggae band Stick Figure has been around for 20 years, eight albums, and countless hours on the road, but lead vocalist and guitarist Scott Woodruff has never seen a track take off like "Angels Above Me" did this past week. The six-year-old song hit number one on the iTunes sales charts in six different countries, including the United Kingdom, Austria, and Canada, skyrocketing "out of nowhere," according to Woodruff. Stick Figure has had plenty of thrilling milestones before, with albums repeatedly hitting number one in the reggae category, and hit singles amassing hundreds of millions of streams.

Spotify adds'Verified' badges to distinguish human artists from AI Spotify is introducing a'Verified' badge to help users identify when artists on its platform are human, not AI-generated. The world's most-used music streaming service said the'Verified by Spotify' text and green checkmark icon would appear next to artist names when they meet defined standards demonstrating authenticity. This could include having linked social accounts on their artist profile, consistent listener activity or other signals of a real artist behind the profile, the company said, such as merchandise or concert dates. In its blog post, Spotify said more than 99% of the artists listeners actively search for will be verified, representing hundreds of thousands of artists. It said the process would prioritise acts with important contributions to music culture and history, rather than content farms, with the platform rolling out verification and badges over the coming weeks.

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However, existing music datasets suffer from limited size, accessibility, and lack of audio resources.

PCWorld reveals five overlooked Spotify settings that can dramatically enhance your listening experience, from audio quality to playlist management. Key improvements include enabling lossless audio for Premium subscribers, activating crossfade transitions, and using Smart Shuffle with Less Repeats to reduce song repetition. These hidden features help create seamless playback, better music recommendations, and higher sound quality without requiring expensive upgrades. Spotify remains by far the largest music streaming service, with nearly 700 million users worldwide. However, most are probably unaware of the many tricks that can make the experience more enjoyable. We present the most important tips and explain how to use them effectively.

The mysterious singer with millions of streams - but who (or what) is she? Sienna Rose is having a good month. Three of her dusky, jazz-infused soul songs are in Spotify's Viral Top 50. The most popular, a dreamy ballad called Into The Blue, has been played more than five million times. If she continues on this trajectory, Rose could become one of the year's hottest new stars.

Apple's Siri AI will be powered by Gemini The Duo and Family plans are getting a $2 price hike. Spotify is raising the prices for its premium subscriptions by $1 to $2 across the board, starting this February. Those are similar figures to the company's last price hike in 2024. Subscribers across the US, Estonia and Latvia will soon receive an email, notifying them that they'll be paying a larger amount for their February bill. The streaming service said it's raising its prices occasionally to "reflect the value that Spotify delivers," "to continue offering the best possible experience" and to "benefit artists."

A campaigner said: 'This stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models.' A campaigner said: 'This stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models.' Platform with 700m users says it is investigating after Anna's Archive claims to have scraped tracks and metadata An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online. Observers said the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology. A group called Anna's Archive said it had scraped 86m music files from Spotify and 256m rows of metadata such as artist and album names.

GPU prices could follow RAM's big rise Spotify's new playlist feature gives users more control over their recommendation algorithm Users in New Zealand will be able to write prompts for custom playlists. Spotify is attempting to give users more control over the music the streaming service recommends with a new playlist feature called Prompted Playlist. The beta feature is rolling out in New Zealand starting on December 11, and will let users write a custom prompt that Spotify can use -- alongside their listening history -- to create a playlist of new music. By tapping on Prompted Playlist, Spotify subscribers participating in the beta will be presented with a prompt field where they can type exactly what they want to hear and how they want Spotify's algorithm to respond. And while past AI features took users' individual taste into consideration, Spotify claims Prompted Playlist taps into your entire Spotify listening history, all the way back to day one.

How can you tell if your new favourite artist is a real person? There's a new song doing the rounds, and in the immortal words of Kylie Minogue, you just can't get it out of your head. But what if it was created by a robot, or the artist themself is a product of artificial intelligence (AI)? Do streaming sites have an obligation to label music as AI-generated? And does it even matter, if you like what you hear?