It has now been over a month since many Spotify users pointed out that “Sienna Rose” is reportedly an AI-generated project, and many news outlets, including Rolling Stone, reported on the same. But despite the growing backlash, Spotify has yet to take any visible action.
It’s not only a sham that this thing’s artist page remains live, but it is quite appalling that the songs are still circulating thanks to Spotify’s algorithms and discovery playlist, and nowhere on its profile is there a clear label indicating that the music is AI-generated. And I suppose, none of it is really a surprise to many people, considering this is just what we have come to expect from Spotify these days.
If anything, the numbers suggest the opposite of accountability from the streamers. Rather than its plays declining because it is all generative AI, Sienna Rose’s monthly listeners have now climbed from 2.6 million to almost 4 million, within just a month, signaling growing reach for the AI slop.
For reference, Paramore’s Hayley Williams, Baltimore’s metal stars, Turnstile, the breakout indie act from New York, Geese, and Cameron Winter, who are practically everywhere, have significantly fewer monthly listeners than Sienna Rose.
Mind you, Sienna Rose does not have any social media presence; there are no interviews from this artist on the internet, no live gigs listed under its name, no Bandcamp page, and its YouTube comments are disabled. It is diabolical that they are now outperforming many indie musicians grinding it out on tours for years.
Deezer has also confirmed “that many of Sienna Rose’s albums and songs are detected and flagged as AI on Deezer.” But even after a month on Spotify, the AI tag still hasn’t appeared, and its audience keeps on growing.
If anybody is curious as to how the music part of it actually sounds like, well, it is profoundly generic and algorithm-friendly, widely speculated to be trained on the vocal style and musical beats of Olivia Dean.
Among the 4 million listeners who are oblivious to the fact that this is AI is also pop star Selena Gomez, who shared one of Sienna Rose’s songs on her Golden Globes Instagram post, unintentionally giving an AI-created artist’s catalogue a platform and visibility.
So much of what is being made today is already made to be crammed onto a 6-inch screen to sell you subscriptions and ads for countless betting companies and whatnot. Everybody involved at the top is trying to squeeze every bit of money from you in whatever way they can. And now there is this new thing, which is everywhere, and all these tech-bros keep wanting the death of creativity and are always tweeting about how this new AI tool will end movie studios or animation or replace real musicians.
Of course, these companies do not care; they just want to make the most amount of profit they can in the next six months and move on, and I, who is very young, feel like an old man yelling at the clouds when I say I am so sick and tired of seeing AI everywhere. And I know, I am not the only person who is exhausted out of my mind from these AI slops, but all these tech-bros are annoyingly loud. We must bully whoever we can at the very least, to have somewhat of a distinction between what is made by AI or what is human, for those of us who still appreciate real art.