How did a fake ODESZA album slip through to major streaming platforms?

Despite all the talk of major music streaming services being ready to repel the onslaught of fake music, it has happened again. Someone released an AI-generated album from ODESZA, a Seattle band, on its official artist profiles.

Thousands of ODESZA fans were pleasantly surprised when the album "Worlds” appeared on several larger music streaming platforms, such as Amazon Music, YouTube Music, SoundCloud, and Tidal.

The album was uploaded to the band’s official accounts, so it certainly seemed real enough – even though ODESZA wasn’t advertising any new material.

Many indeed believed the music was real – and expressed dismay that ODESZA could create something so poor. One Reddit user posted: “Personally, I'm halfway through listening, and I hate it. I hate every song. It’s really bad music, in my opinion.”

“Sounds like Avicii came back to life and tried to make music but had a stroke while making the album,” she added.

How did it slip through?

Well, when the music is AI-generated, it can definitely sound weird. And that’s what actually happened – the upload was only masquerading as ODESZA’s original work and was fraudulently linked to the band’s official unique identifier for artists on streaming services.

Some caught the fraud immediately, of course. One fan wrote: “Heard 10 seconds of the first song, knew it was fake.” Another said: “It’s clearly AI garbage.”

Weirdly, people seem to have realized what was going on faster than the music streaming platforms, although, notably, the fake album didn’t appear on Spotify and Apple Music. Does this mean that the platforms can’t effectively detect AI-generated content and prevent it from appearing on them?

The problem of fraudulent AI-generated music is especially annoying to Tidal users. This particular platform seems unable to keep up with cleaning out AI and imposter tracks from artist profiles.

According to The Festive Owl, a music industry news insider, someone managed to upload the “album” to a distribution service provider, tagging ODESZA’s artist ID, and the creation actually appeared on their profiles.

Moreover, the AI-generated collection wasn’t flagged and made it through to SoundCloud, Amazon Music, and YouTube. A few days later, ODESZA’s team made sure the content was removed.

It seems that the problem of fraudulent AI-generated music is especially annoying to Tidal users. This particular platform seems unable to keep up with cleaning out AI and imposter tracks from artist profiles.

The problem is everywhere

ODESZA isn’t unique, in other words. For example, many users say they had to unfollow the metal band Alraune because a new generic ambient track with AI watercolor art appeared under their name every week.

Crooks are constantly attempting to impersonate others in the entertainment industry – here’s our wild story about an imposter who stole the identity of an A-tier music producer and managed to play live gigs under a false name in London.

It’s usually up to the victims to try to fix the issues. After all, ODESZA had to make sure the fake album was deleted themselves.

Even Spotify, the largest music streamer, has been facing problems with fake music, even though the company says that it “invests heavily in automated and manual reviews” to prevent royalty fraud.

Deezer is proactive, though. A few weeks ago, the streaming platform deployed a new AI music detection tool, seeking to increase transparency for users and safeguard the rights of creators.

Shockingly, the new tool detected that roughly 10,000 fully AI-generated tracks are delivered to the platform daily, equivalent to around 10% of the daily content delivery. Deezer said that such content will be removed from algorithmic recommendations.