Spotify has started a limited beta of Artist Profile Protection, an opt-in setting that lets artists check releases delivered under their name and approve or reject them before they go live. The company calls protecting artist identity a top priority for 2026 and says cheap AI tracks have made misattribution worse.
Artists who switch it on get notified of each incoming release. Anything they decline or ignore stays off their Spotify profile, although it can still appear on other services. To keep legitimate music flowing, each artist gets a unique key to give trusted distributors so their releases are approved automatically. Team admins and editors can manage it on desktop and mobile web. It sits on top of the existing tools for reporting a wrong release after the fact, so artists get a check before release as well as a way to complain afterwards.
Spotify says the problem runs from metadata mistakes and shared names to bad actors deliberately attaching music to someone else's page, which can distort catalogues, stats, Release Radar and discovery. Examples cited include AI knock-offs of Tyler, the Creator's Don't Tap the Glass, fakes on the profiles of Father John Misty and Jeff Tweedy, and a copycat called King Lizard Wizard after King Gizzard left the service. In the Tyler case a fake briefly sat second in search results for the album name. Spotify concedes that open distribution, which lets independents release and switch distributors easily, also leaves gaps that bad actors exploit, and says more control over incoming releases has been among artists' most frequent requests.
The company admits the tool is not for everyone. Because unanswered releases are blocked by default, a busy artist could hold up their own music, so Spotify recommends it for artists with repeated misattributions or a common name who are comfortable watching their catalogue closely, and suggests telling the label or distributor about any rejected release. It says what artists see in Spotify for Artists during the beta is incomplete, and that it hopes to open the feature to all artists as soon as it can.
The pilot came a week after Sony said it had sought removal of more than 135,000 AI deepfakes of its artists. Spotify reported removing over 75 million spammy tracks in the year to September 2025 when it set out new rules for AI content, and Deezer says around 60,000 fully AI tracks arrive each day, roughly 39% of its deliveries.
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