Not just Spotify, AI slop is taking over YouTube Music recommendations too

Paying subscribers on YouTube Music are getting increasingly frustrated with a problem that’s been plaguing Spotify users for months now. AI-generated songs are flooding their recommendation feeds, and there’s almost nothing they can do about it.

A Reddit user, vlastawa, recently posted about their experience on r/YoutubeMusic, and the complaints hit hard. They opened the app to find six out of ten recommendations were AI-generated tracks. “The other day every other song in my auto-generated playlist was AI slop,” they wrote, adding that clicking “I’m not interested” or giving thumbs down does essentially nothing since it only blocks that specific song, not the entire fake artist. The post quickly gained traction with over 370 upvotes.

Users report being able to spot them within seconds due to telltale signs like overly catchy melodies, weird mixing artifacts, and that same auto-tuned voice popping up across different so-called projects. One commenter noted that checking the artist page reveals another red flag: “If there are 545 albums released within one year that’s a good sign.”

The issue mirrors what’s happening over on Spotify, where users have been complaining about AI tracks invading their Discover Weekly playlists for many months, as reported by Futurism. Even The Guardian highlighted how AI-generated tracks are topping Billboard charts on Spotify.

Despite promising to address the problem back in September 2025, Spotify has refused to implement an outright ban on AI-generated music, arguing that “music has always been shaped by technology”.

Back on YouTube Music, the frustration is hitting a boiling point. Vlastawa mentioned they’ve gone back to listening to their local music collection about half the time. “Dear Google, that’s not what I’m paying for,” they wrote. Another user in the thread pointed out that this isn’t just a YouTube Music problem either. They have friends using Spotify and Amazon Music who’ve both “complained to me about AI shit coming through on recommend lists”.

Interestingly, Apple Music seems to be dodging the bullet for now. One commenter mentioned that Apple Music has “none of the problems I’m seeing in YouTube music,” crediting their active work with distributors. Meanwhile, Deezer has reportedly taken a more proactive stance by marking AI music and keeping it out of recommendations altogether.

For now, YouTube Music subscribers are left manually curating their playlists or threatening to cancel subscriptions. Meanwhile, a recent study also revealed that over 20% of recommended videos for new YouTube users are AI slop. So it’s clear that platforms need to figure out ways to filter out AI slop or at least give users a toggle to hide AI-generated videos/music for good.

More complaints for those interested: 1,2,3,4,5,6

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