How do you avoid AI music?
I keep ending up with AI music in my playlist when exploring for me music. What is your workflow to avoid it? Searching DDG for me has been more bandwidth intensive than I like...
Some background. My favorite song is a song I haven't heard yet. And my appetite sways wildly. One month it's old school urban rap, the next it's kpop, and then Nordic death metal and so on.
I never know what I'll be in the mood for but I'll find a thread with a song I don't know and use it to build play lists to see what I find and sometimes I find trash gems that way.
This last time our friend group watched Eurovision 2026 together and some of those songs are bangers. One of them led to adding a few artists built off of playlists from that song I really liked, and they all ended up being AI... damnit!
Spicetify has an anti AI extension for songs known to be AI, but I can't say how effective it is.
The answer is stop using streaming services. The AI problem will only get worse as people keep paying for these services because what CEO is okay paying an artist a premium when they could instead generate slop and sell that for the same price? But your music on Bandcamp or sail the seas, just stop using Spotify.
Listen to songs that are more then 10 years old. My autism doesn't like new music so I just have a playlist of over 4k. Although I did add a few from music creators from TikTok. Very little though. I'm quite strict
I find bands by going to shows. I buy vinyl there and add their music to my playlists.
I listen to bands I trust and older music mostly
my strategy is to not listen to music, but that may not be the best solution for everyone
I own my media. I have old vinyl, 8-tracks, cassettes, cd's and digital files. I've never once "streamed" music except when I turned on my AC Delco radio back in the 70's.
Now, this is also what pisses me off about ai. I listen to older music to stay away from it. That might sound crazy, but the world is crazy...
i think last.fm + soulseek kinda works. i haven't seen shitty ai tracks on both of them.
I used to be able to just start a "smooth jazz" or "lo-fi" playlist and the algorithm would do its thing, but now I need to specifically look for "classics" or some such otherwise the slop shows up. I've not yet had this issue with the rest of my musical landscape though as that does default to real bands, but these "background" styles are definitely affected.
By listening to music from before AI slop existed.
FACTS! Unless it randomly starts to come on Pandora then I get will mad.
Using Bandcamp
https://blog.bandcamp.com/2026/01/13/keeping-bandcamp-human/
By not updating my music taste for the last 15 years
Be warned that all styles of music are getting AI inserted into them.
Your method works as long as you never use an algorithm to mix your playlist, but as soon as you do, you're likely to get an AI track inserted into your ears, even if it's 70s classic rock.
Music peaked right around the time I was 20.
That may be when you stopped actively seeking new music. There are loads of amazing new artists in every genre. There is so much good new stuff coming out its hard to keep up.
Yeah, same.
I only sub to Deezer, a French streaming service that actively filters AI music and blocks it from their algorithms and search results.
Pretty much what every one of my friends have done. My kids were a great source in their late teens / early twenties. But as they've gotten older now they pretty much listen to the same stuff.
No, I'm not going to have more kids.
Yeah this is also a key part lol
I don't stream music, I buy albums on Bandcamp pretty much exclusively for lack of better options. Then I play them to death, and buy another handful. Some piracy. Some vinyl purchases.
I haven't come across any AI slop in my favourite genres top of the month lists on Bandcamp yet.
Don't use Spotify, they actively try to put AI shit into your playlist so they have to pay less royalties. Not sure how scumbaggy other services are.
I think I read that Qobutz at least tries to work against AI music.
YouTube music is what I'm using, add them to your list of scum please.
How would they pay less royalties? That AI music is still being uploaded by someone.
Spotify generate it themselves
All AI work is public domain, but also, its thought that Spotify themselves likely create some of that AI content - although I'm not familiar enough with Spotify to confirm that myself.
It can be presumed that Spotify is doing that to some degree. There is consensus amongst scientists studying the field, artists, labels and other people in the field about that.
The public domain thing is kind a useless argument at this point; It is the case law we are building upon currently but that's basically just because haven't gotten a broader legal framework yet and we're still making AI fit into what we have.
But we don't have to answer by citing to the law, we can answer by looking at the ethics and expecting the law to loosely follow our ethics - that's what it is designed to do.
And so on.
I'm trying to say this because the law is there to follow our feelings. If we structurally don't condone something to a certain level as a society, we make it illegal or we regulate it.
And as you can see, there's plenty of reasons to regulate and some are straight up financial, so we definitely should do something about it.
And with "we" I mean specifically the Republicans and Democrats, the FCC (regulation to combat market disruption), judges, civil rights lawyers, and possible plaintiffs all have the chance to push us into a better position societally.
Shoutout to Bernie Sanders, he's trying to start a movement about it, and as always he's ahead of the curve in Congress.
You're wrong about that. Plenty of people do music as a hobby. There will always be more content to scrape. Expecting the system to crash because nobody plays music anymore is unrealistic.
Never stumbled upon AI generated music ever.
I have my local library with ripped CDs and pirated music mostly from the 2010s and below.
When I feel like discovering new music, I
No streaming bullshit, AI algorithms made to keep me hooked, and definetly no AI music to be seen or heard.
♥️♥️♥️
Also +1 to the guy that mentioned to listen to your local music scene! I have as many smaller local artists as I possibly can in my library. I'm always looking for random stickers on the streets or festival posters, and then I get home and look all of them up to see if they're my jam.
I'll need to do that. I don't today. I will.
Are you using Spotify ?
Because they are mainly known for 2 things:
I'm not aware of a streaming service completely free of slop, but I know some like Qobuz are actively detecting and removing it.
+1 for Qobuz. Seems like an ethical company. They pay artists 4x Spotify rates too.
Bamdcamp took a stand against blatant slop but will allow artists to use some generative methods in their music.
Tbf some generative methods are cool and foster creativity, like modular synthesis.
There's nothing wrong about using randomness to get your creative juices flowing. People have been using card decks, dice, Euclidean rhythms, sample and hold and so on for a long time (Andrew Huang has a lot of examples of tracks where the main instrument, theme and genre are randomly picked). I guess sanitized, corporate slop could be used the same way, as long as the artist is fully in control of the creative process. For me the line stops where slop is used as is, with no human creative input.
Can you elaborate on that first point please?
They ran ICE ads and only stopped because the campaign ended, not because of massive backlash: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/09/spotify-no-longer-running-ice-recruitment-ads-after-us-government-campaign-ends
They hosted and donated to the orange shitstain while disproportionately targeting "controversial" black artists: https://www.themarysue.com/spotify-supporting-donald-trump-is-horrifically-hypocritical-after-how-theyve-treated-controversial-black-and-brown-musicians/
They pay hundreds of millions to nazi propagandists for the exclusive rights to spread their hate: https://apnews.com/article/joe-rogan-spotify-deal-76fa0e2c9d4b137f510428528ea6226b
The CEO stepped down to make AI weapons with Peter thiel : https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2025-07-31/spotifys-ceo-owns-an-ai-weapons-company-some-musicians-say-its-time-to-leave
Thank you for the info!
I'm not, I'm using YouTube music which isn't much better. I'm still looking for another platform to use but so far I need multiple to get all the music I like in one place.
Though I've considered buying CDs again and ripping them for local storage...
Same boat here. YouTube music and AI songs being more common. For right now if I hear someone new I check to see if they had an album before 2025... This method won't be viable for much longer.
Thank you!
If your kick is new music than you should just switch languages and listen to stuff pre 2022.
I listen to a ton of foreign language music. The 2022 piece would help but it won't last for me. Young people are always coming up with new sounds and I love that!
Yeah and many of them are using AI to do it.
Given your genre flexibility, there is nearly infinite music out there from well before the was any question about it being human-made. You could easily listen to songs you've never heard back to back for the rest of your life without coming close to running out of old music.
For modern stuff you've basically got to see video of them performing live to be sure.
Sadly that's what it feels like it's coming too. But I don't just want to support artists of a given age...
I know. I want my cake and eat it too.
The video might be AI too.
Easy ... I don't download it.
Piracy. Private trackers are genuinely better stewards and curators of their libraries because unlike the the slop factories, they're made by real humans, for real humans.
Listen to artists I know are human, if the artist doesn't show up in a web search sorry but they gotta go its too risky
Cancel Spotify if that's what you use. I've been happy with Tidal.
Certainly not a magic bullet tho. I tend to not listen to a lot of new music so I don't give the slop much of an opening.
+1, I've been very happy with Tidal for years now. I go down discovery holes fairly often and have yet to come across anything AI. It does a good job of vibe matching what I wanna hear.
Plus the audiophile quality is very, very nice if you have the equipment!
Tidal lacks about a third of the music on my playlist. They have all the big artists but miss a lot of the small ones...
when was the last time you checked that? if you can toss me two or three artist names I can see if they're on there now
A year or so ago when I found out how little YouTube pays artists. It would be hard to figure out which ones were missing but I'll take a look again and see how it is this weekend when I check out Apple music.
I built up my own personal library through the years that I will probably still be working my way through in 10-15 years, when I find something I like in it I search out more. I realize that doesn't help anyone else, good luck out there
Thank you. And pretty much what I've been doing. But lately...
I guess I did one thing right and had the foresight to do that over the years lol, but yeah it's rough now. Soulseek is still around :) then I usually use Bandcamp if I wanna buy things
Thank you!
By getting old.
I don't purposely listen to anything made after 2015.
I listen to DJs on Twitch. I look up stuff on bandcamp.
By streaming mp3s, which I have collected and updated for almost 25 years, from my personal server.
Can’t help you with music but I share your frustration when it comes to being suckered into consuming AI slop. My entire adult life, text to speech has been a constant part of my day, so I pride myself on being able to sniff out when the person talking isn’t a person.
Even with these AI voices I’ll eventually catch an odd stutter or wonky prosody, but it may take a good minute or more of listening, and when I do figure it out I feel like I’ve been scammed.
Same! I'm getting old enough to be not sure I can trust my own discernment.
Buy real CDs from artists I see play in person. Or CDs of artists that are long dead.
CDs are key, streaming random tracks you have no clue what you will get.
I've been considering this and ripping them like it's 1996...
Check out your local thrift store and your local library theyre gold mines for physical media to rip the only other thing you'd need is a disc drive
I have one on my gaming PC that I've probably used 3 times in the 15 years I've had that drive.
And a good idea for the hits for sure.
By not letting an AI choose what you hear.
Seems pretty obvious, really.
I used to only rely on people making recommendations but there just isn't enough of that with the people I know unfortunately. Though you're not wrong...
Related bands are less likely to be AI than cold searches. You can also check to see if they have any social media influence, AI bands are unlikely to have any live clips
I'm doing those and they're still getting in. But I don't look to see if they have a presence until I've decided I want to know more about the band...
Definitely research them! Don't just stop at a single song, find out what country they came from and who their influences are. You'll start to piece together a mental map of the various bands you know, as well as discovering new bands that way.
I feel like I'll need to do this every time I discover someone new...
I usually add new songs to one of my many themed playlists (platform of choice) then research more once I start to recognize them. Sometimes I get tired of them before then and just remove them.
I personally would never listen to a song recommended by a machine. Gave pandora a real good shot but it always seems to recommend things I hate, along with Spotify, Apple, etc. so I just let the music find me. You are very lucky it has worked for you! I’ll bet there is a service out there for you that works. I’m also super not picky when it comes to music- don’t care what the lyrics are, as long as it’s a bop I’ll listen to it. In that regard, I would definitely listen to an AI song if I couldn’t tell. Never heard one like that but is the fact that it’s ai the only hangup? I refuse ai at work, web search, almost every aspect of my life, but I don’t think I would care if music was ai.
It's my biggest hangup. As someone who thinks of themselves as an artist I hate thinking I'm helping crowd out artists and reward music plays from people who didn't go through the effort to master music like that.
Just like I've never been able to pirate media (I'm old enough to have been around when MP3s killed music stores). I want the artist to be rewarded.
Maybe I'm being silly? But it's important to me.
Nah I get that, dude! I guess I need to think about it more cuz I’m sure eventually I’ll have that moral conundrum. I’ll keep an eye out on my Apple Music, I think they stated they would have a watermark of some sort. If you’re using Spotify, definitely ditch that, Apple is so much more respectful to artists and the interface isn’t trash.
Look at that, Apple music has an android app. Silly me for not knowing. I'm gonna check my library against their stuff. It's a provider I hadn't considered!
Thank you.
I’m an android guy. But I was also an iPod guy. So I’m into it.
I've downloaded the app and found a process to move my playlists over supposedly without much pain. I'll give it a go when I have time and brain power for it. Probably this weekend.
Qobuz has seemed to stay on top of generated music for me so far even with recommendation playlists.
The only time I hear AI music is when someone sends it to me. And since they usually tell me "they made it with AI," I don't actually listen to it. I haven't used Spotify's recommendation system for a while, since it became garbage long before AI was around, and I don't listen to random music like on a radio or live podcast type thing. Occasionally it might be in a meme video, but it's incredibly rare not least of which is because all the creators I tend to follow and watch also hate AI.
i only listen to music from bands that have existed since long before ai music became a thing
There is a local music festival to me and as part of their promo, they have a playlist with songs from every band on a Spotify playlist. I imagine it's something other music festivals do and could be good to build a library of music you know is made by real people
I didn't think of this... I need to go to more of these. Thank you!
Try ,No AI DDG or https://radio.garden/ or. https://monochrome.tf/
I'll give them a go, thank you!
By checking out the Ukrainian metal band IGNEA.
Pretty sure I'm adding everything they've published to my playlist! Currently listening to Incurable Disease at an unhealthy level and cannot get enough.
Thank you again!
Thank you! Listening to Dreams of Lands Unseen right now. Instant add to my playlist.
What platform are you on? I haven’t experienced this in Apple Music but I often listen to the same stuff rather than going down discovery holes.
I'd second this question - I use a lot of bancamp and so far it seems pretty ai-free
YouTube music...
I've tried to leave them before but I haven't found a single platform that has more than 60% of the content I like that isn't worse (Spotify for example).
I like the odd music so much from small creators I'd hate to lose it.
Seems like there are a few threads like this from 2025 where they just tell users to submit feedback but no way to block it yet it seems.
Probably more effective to cancel your account and tell them why you’re cancelling rather than sending feedback though 🤷♂️
I'm looking for another service right now that has enough of the music in my playlist to swap and do just this.
Plus it's a family plan so a little extra sting.
But then I have to teach my mom the new service... I love her. But maybe not that much 😂♥️
Whenever I'm feeling a new genre I don't have a playlist for I find an already made one. Old blogs and forums and such have so many curated lists. Lots of music communities exist and are still updating lists with new artists. From there I either find lists recommending songs/artists similar to the ones I liked (again plenty of human curated lists) or get recommendations from friends.
I follow some of my absolute favorite artists and they post inspiration playlists when they're making new albums from time to time too that I'll often listen to.
Basically I just don't randomly search for songs.
I hadn't considered that... Any communities/blogs you recommend?
I normally avoid that stuff as an introvert but reading their stuff wouldn't hurt. I'm not talking after all.
Not really. I don't follow any specific ones. Just go hunting through DDG searches and stuff when the mood for something new hits me. Though, they're are a few music communities here on Lemmy including an eternal playlist one where people post more songs all the time.
I'll check em out, thank you!