Music | The Verge

Verified by Spotify badge lets you know this artist isn’t AI

2026-04-30T09:08:23-04:00

Spotify is launching a new verification program to combat spam, fakes, and AI. Some artists will now have a "Verified by Spotify" badge and a green checkmark on their profile, indicating that the company has confirmed a real person is behind the music and the profile. At least at launch, Spotify says that AI personas or profiles that primarily upload AI-generated music are not eligible for the verification program. It did leave the door open to the possibility in the future, though, saying, "the concept of artist authenticity is complex and quickly evolving."

Not just anyone can be verified, however. Spotify says that there must be "consist …

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The keyboard used to score Dune 2 is getting more affordable

2026-04-29T11:39:24-04:00

Expressive E is making its Osmose MPE keyboard (comparatively) more affordable by ditching the synthesizer and making it a simple MIDI controller. The new Osmose CE comes in two sizes, 49 and 61 keys, for $999 and $1,199, respectively. Now, $999 is pretty expensive for a MIDI controller, but it's far less than Osmose's $1,799 starting price. It's even a pretty good deal when pitted against its closest competitor, the $1,399 Roli Seaboard 2.

For those unfamiliar, the Osmose is one of the most unique synths on the market. It looks like a standard piano-style keyboard, but its keys move back and forth, allowing you to coax gentle bends out of …

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Taylor Swift is stepping up the legal war on AI copycats

2026-04-28T20:26:42-04:00

Taylor Swift has been at the center of AI imitation controversies for years, and now, she's become the latest celebrity who's escalating attempts to protect herself from AI copycats. As usual, however, the legal system intersects with technology in complicated ways - and Swift's efforts may be a long shot.

In trademark applications filed last week, Swift's team asked for protection for two phrases spoken by the singer: "Hey, it's Taylor Swift" and "Hey, it's Taylor." The trademark applications, filed by TAS Rights Management on behalf of Swift, include audio clips of Swift saying the two phrases as part of a promotion for her latest album. …

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Tomora’s Come Closer is an ecstatic love letter to ’90s dance music

2026-04-27T10:40:40-04:00

Before Coachella, Tomora wasn't on my radar at all. It's actually only by chance that I stumbled upon them - I opened the wrong stream because my TV was lagging like a MFer. I paused for a few moments, entranced by the two ethereal Nordic women banging on giant drums to a techno beat. I made a mental note to check them out the following weekend, because Drain was the priority (especially since the Sonora stage wasn't streaming on weekend two). It was only later that I would find out that Tomora is a collaboration between Norwegian singer-songwriter Aurora and Tom Rowlands, one-half of The Chemical Brothers.

Suffice it to say, they were incr …

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25 years later, is it time for a new iPod?

2026-04-23T09:09:02-04:00

This is Lowpass by Janko Roettgers, a newsletter on the ever-evolving intersection of tech and entertainment, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the original iPod. With its monochrome display, mechanical scroll wheel, and 5 GB hard drive, Apple's pioneering music player now looks like the relic of a bygone era.

And yet, in a surprising twist, there's growing interest in a redo.

After being essentially flat for five years, Google searches for "MP3 Player" tripled since last fall. A Reddit group for fans of digital audio players is now attracting 90,000 visitors per week on average …

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Deezer says AI song uploads have nearly overtaken human music

2026-04-20T13:56:26-04:00

Deezer says it receives nearly 75,000 AI-generated song submissions to its music streaming platform each day, accounting for about 44 percent of all daily uploads, as reported earlier by TechCrunch. Despite the increase in "fraudulent" uploads, Deezer says the consumption of AI songs makes up around 1 to 3 percent of total streams, as the platform continues to remove AI-generated music from its recommendation algorithm.

Deezer positions the tool as setting an "industry standard," adding that the platform is currently the "only" music streaming service tagging AI-generated tracks. The service also demonetizes AI-generated songs and has stopp …

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Teenage Engineering might be getting into instrument amps next

2026-04-17T06:01:48-04:00

An unannounced Teenage Engineering device, the KO-Amp 35, can be found over at the FCC in a new filing. The label clearly marks it as a member of the midrange EP family instruments, which currently includes the KO-II and its spinoffs, the Riddim and the Medieval. The name suggests that TE could be getting into the budget guitar and instrument amp space, but the filing reveals very little.

All we know is that it has a built-in rechargeable battery and Bluetooth, but little else. There is also a "model difference statement," which suggests the KO-Amp will come in multiple colors. The angle and distance of the images in the filing make it diff …

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Spotify just won $322 million from music pirates it can’t find

2026-04-16T07:45:19-04:00

Spotify and the three major labels have won a $322 million default judgement against Anna's Archive, the open-source library and pirate activist group that planned to publicly release millions of music files scraped from Spotify's platform.

The judgment comes after the unknown operator of Anna's Archive failed to respond to a lawsuit filed by Spotify, Universal Music Group (UMG), Warner Music Group (WMG) and Sony Music, which was made publicly available in January. The lawsuit was launched in response to Anna's Archive announcing in December that it had ripped 86 million songs from Spotify and intended to create a "preservation archive" fo …

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Justin Bieber’s YouTube Coachella set had nothing to do with who owns his music

2026-04-19T12:25:43-04:00

This past Saturday at the Coachella music festival, Justin Bieber played the first of two headlining sets in a deal reportedly worth $10 million. It was his most significant solo performance in years. But Bieber spent some of his time on stage the way many of us do on Saturday nights: on YouTube. For some of the set, Bieber played parts of his older songs right off YouTube from a Mac laptop. Behind him, on the stage's screen, you could see YouTube's website as he searched for songs in real time and then put the videos on full-screen while he sang along on stage.

"I'm sorry to cut it, but these are little snippets. I just want to see how fa …

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AI influencers are ‘everywhere’ at Coachella

2026-04-19T12:26:00-04:00

Coachella kicked off on Friday, and as usual, it's the place to be for online influencers looking to show off their memorable experiences at the festival. A quick scroll through my social media feeds has already shown me many uncannily attractive figures in glitzy outfits, posing for perfectly staged photographs with celebrities.

Only some of these content creators aren't really there. They don't even exist at all outside of our screens. They're generated using AI tools.

Faking Coachella attendance is nothing new - even real influencers have been doing so in recent years - but generative AI has now progressed to the point where it's become …

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