Report: Spotify plans to launch AI music remix service early next year, allowing users to create their own remixes and covers
According to the Financial Times, Spotify plans to launch an AI-driven music remix service in early 2027, allowing paid subscribers to create their own remixes and cover versions of songs, and is considering charging an additional $4 to $5 per month. Spotify is negotiating licensing agreements with Sony Music and Warner Music, has reached agreements with Universal Music Group, Merlin, and Believe, and artists themselves can still decide whether to participate. Under the proposed plan, royalties generated from remixes will flow in full back to the original artists, and plays of remixed works will also count toward the original songs' chart performance.
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Spotify's AI remix plan involves licensing negotiations, additional subscription fees, and royalty flows back to artists, which readers can use to judge how music platforms will incorporate generative AI into the existing copyright system.
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Report: Spotify plans to launch AI music remix service early next year, allowing users to create their own song remixes and cover versions
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With this feature, paying subscribers can use AI to rearrange pop songs, for example turning a folk song into a dance track, or generating a new version in which a singer "covers" another artist's song. The people familiar with the matter cautioned that the specific timing and pricing have not been finalized and may still change.
After the media outlet reported on its AI remix plan, Spotify's shares rose nearly 6% on Friday. The company declined to comment.
Spotify is in talks with Sony Music and Warner Music on licensing agreements that would allow it to offer the feature. It is understood that the company has reached agreements with Universal Music Group, independent label licensing agency Merlin and French music company Believe.
People familiar with the matter said Spotify has teamed up with Universal Music, the world's largest record company, to begin one-on-one discussions with a number of well-known musicians in an attempt to persuade them to open their music copyrights to the service.
However, sources acknowledged that compared with persuading some long-established veteran musicians, securing cooperation from today's top pop stars faces noticeably greater resistance. Under the plan, even if the record company has signed a licensing agreement with Spotify, the musicians themselves still have the right to decide whether to participate.
Spotify first teased the feature as early as May this year, but has not disclosed further details since. In August, co-CEO Gustav Söderström told investors that the service would be officially launched once it was fully ready.
It is worth noting that this service is completely different from AI music generators such as Suno, which generate entirely new audio from scratch based on text prompts. Spotify's model is to allow fans to create derivative works based on the works of musicians who have authorized and joined the service.
Under the currently proposed plan, the copyright royalties generated by fans' remixes will be fully returned to the original musicians. People familiar with the matter also said Spotify is developing a supporting system so that these remixes can properly enter various playlists, and their play counts will also be directly counted toward the original songs' performance on Spotify's official charts.
At an investor meeting held in September this year, Söderström publicly called on veteran artists to actively embrace this AI value-added feature to broaden their monetization channels:
"If you are a singer active in the 1980s or 1990s, the only way to increase your income in the past was to hope that other professional singers would cover or remix your old songs. Now, you can rely entirely on fans around the world to create, remix and cover your classic works themselves."
He further added: "As long as one fan makes a remix of your song, your share of royalties from the overall streaming royalty pool will actually increase as a result."