A Canadian musician was surprised to find an entire album, generated by AI, linked to his name and profile on music platforms without his permission or knowledge.
Ian Janes, an independent singer, musician and producer from Nova Scotia, says he does everything himself from performing to producing to publicity.
When Janes opened up his Spotify profile several weeks ago, he said he found a new album under his name that he didn’t know about. The album also popped up on Apple Music.
“It’s terrible,” Janes said about the album. “It’s AI generated, like music that you would listen to when you’re on hold or maybe at the dentist’s office … my dentist’s office plays better music than this.”
Janes said he is not getting any profits from the album.
“That money is distributed through a distributor,” Janes said. “So whoever the distributor is that uploaded this music and was able to access my profile, they’re collecting the money and then they’re distributing it to the person that owns the copyright. And the person that owns the copyright is not Ian Janes.”
Janes considered it could have been a mix-up with someone else named Ian Janes, but after several online searches he said he couldn’t find another artist with his same name.
The Nova Scotia musician had reported the fake album and said it was removed, but then it popped up again under a new Spotify profile created with the same name.
Matthew Gorman, Janes’ entertainment lawyer, says unless it copied his music or used his image or likeness that there’s not necessarily a copyright violation. Gorman tells Global News artists are typically not entitled to get trademark protection for your legal name or surname unless there is a huge amount of notoriety.
“I personally haven’t seen or heard of anything like this,” Gorman said. “But this is the first time that I’ve actually seen what could possibly be an AI release land on someone’s specific artist profile.”
Gorman added that both Spotify and the distributor have said the music will be removed from his account.
“The broader, bigger concern for all artists is that it’s really easy to create AI-generated music these days,” Gorman said. “We are seeing a lot of AI-generated music uploaded to the DSPs.”
“The more AI music that’s out there, intuitively there’s less money, there’s less of the pie to go around to artists. That’s a key risk.”
Spotify and Apple Music did not respond to Global News for comment.