Spotify hit by AI music scandal after fake Blaze Foley song goes live

Spotify has pulled an AI-generated song falsely attributed to late country artist Blaze Foley, raising fresh concerns about deepfake music, legacy fraud, and the streaming platform’s failure to flag synthetic content.

When looking up Blaze Foley on Wikipedia, it becomes apparent that he was a cult figure in the outlaw-country scene, but died young at 39. Foley was shot in the chest over a pension dispute.

Imagine if he knew in 1989, in his last moments, that in 2025 something called AI would generate a ballad called “Together” and pass it off as one of his.

Well, Spotify had a job on its hands to remove the track and issue a statement explaining the violations involved.

This is not the only time that AI-generated music has caused a stir. Synthetic band The Velvet Sundown recently made a splash on the AI scene and has just short of 1.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify.

How the song slipped through

This case is an anomaly in that a fake song was uploaded and credited to an actual artist more than three decades after his death.

It was uploaded via TikTok-owned SoundOn and appeared legit with artwork and metadata.

Spotify subsequently removed it after fans and his label flagged it as suspicious.

Another recent case happened with Guy Clark, another deceased country music singer, who had a synthetically impersonated track called “Happened to You” uploaded and taken down.

Imposter syndrome

Real artists – both living and dead – are being impersonated by AI with increasing ease, and fake tracks can hijack discographies, redirect royalties, and damage legacies.

The issue isn’t purely with the song and artist in question. Spotify is supposed to help champion new bands and artists, but emerging musicians are struggling to compete with AI-generated content optimized for algorithms.

Platforms like Spotify lack transparent AI labeling, leaving fans in the dark. Yet the platform did comment:

“This is not allowed. We take action against licensors and distributors who fail to police for this kind of fraud, and those who commit repeated or egregious violations can and have been permanently removed from Spotify.”