I Hijacked a Real Artist's Spotify with AI Music. It Was Disturbingly Easy
404 Media Emanuel Maiberg
An AI-made song was posted on a real band’s verified Spotify page. It shows how easy it is to hijack artists and cash in on their streams.
Based on reporting by 404 Media, Emanuel Maiberg — read the original for the full story.
Summary, retelling and take written by AI under human oversight; images are AI-generated illustrations. How we work · Report an error
On September 10, the Brooklyn punk band Lathe of Heaven had a new single appear on its verified Spotify page. It was called Riding High, but nothing about it sounded like Lathe of Heaven. The vocals weren’t Gage Allison’s, the artwork didn’t match the band’s style, and the band had not written, performed, or agreed to release it.
The track was made with a simple prompt in Udio, an AI music generator. From there, it was pushed onto Lathe of Heaven’s official pages on Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, and Amazon Music without the band knowing. The trick depends on a long-standing loophole in digital music distribution, one that is now being used openly by people flooding streaming services with AI slop.
The scam is blunt. Put a fake track on a real artist’s page, wait for listeners to click, and collect whatever royalties the streams produce. The listener gets junk instead of the music they wanted; the impostor gets paid off the artist’s audience. That has been reported before, but 404 Media says it identified and reproduced the exact loophole being used.
What makes this ugly is how ordinary it is. The process was described as trivial, and the blame doesn’t seem to stick to any one place. Streaming platforms and digital distributors are both leaving the mess in the middle, which means real artists are left to discover that their own pages can be turned into a delivery system for someone else’s prompt.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the cleanest argument for treating music distribution like a locked door, not a suggestion. If platforms can’t keep a verified artist page from being hijacked by AI sludge, then “verified” is just decoration with a payment button attached. The industry loves talking about AI as innovation; here it looks a lot more like shoplifting with better branding.
Read more about this at: 404 Media