‘A fake album was uploaded on my profile – but Tidal and Amazon Music haven’t taken it down’

A musician and author is urging for an AI album to be removed from her profile by streaming services after it was uploaded without her knowledge.

Greta Morgan, who previously performed under the moniker Springtime Carnivore, had the album added to her profile earlier about a month ago after it was uploaded to a music distribution website.

The eight-track album, titled Exit, features a breathy female voice with much slower, stripped-down songs that sound nothing like her original music.

The AI record adds even more insult to injury as Greta has spent the last few years recovering from spasmodic dysphonia, a disorder causes ‘involuntary spasms in the muscles of the voice box or larynx’, which she was diagnosed with during Covid, meaning she’s taken a break from releasing music.

Greta, who has previously performed alongside Vampire Weekend, was in the US band The Hush Sound and also had a project named Gold Motel, described the AI music as ‘lifeless’.

She added that once she raised it with Spotify and Deezer, the music was removed, but Tidal and Amazon Music still have not taken down the record, despite her raising her concerns.

She’s now urging for all musicians to keep an eye on any dormant music pages so that the same doesn’t happen to them, and is imploring the streaming sites to remove it immediately.

Metro understands that Deezer has AI detection tools in place and applies AI tags to artificial music, which means it’s not recommended and taken down once it’s flagged to the Deezer team.

Greta told Metro: ‘My Springtime Carnivore account has been sitting relatively dormant over the last few years since I’ve started releasing music under my name, Greta Morgan, although on Spotify it still gets 30,000 to 50,000 listeners a month.

‘A few weeks ago, I received a message on Instagram from a friend who said they’d received a new music alert for Springtime Carnivore, but when they listened to it and saw the cover art, they realised it didn’t look or sound like me.

‘It sounds like a very shitty version of records I’ve made – you can hear the same tempos and some of the same instrumentation, but it’s just lifeless. It sounds like mannequin music.’

Greta said she then looked up the name of the composer and it was listed under the name Jonah Rogersz, which she said sounded like ‘an AI name’.

‘It’s just lifeless’

Metro has tried to find the composer ‘Jonah Rogersz’ in official records databases and online but did not find anyone with that name.

Greta added: ‘I then posted about it online and received dozens and dozens of messages from other Springtime Carnivore fans who said they also got the notice and knew it didn’t sound like me.

‘I logged into my Spotify account and saw that on Spotify alone, it had received 5,000 listens in just a couple of days, so while that’s not a huge amount in income streaming, it could have been much higher if I hadn’t caught it.’

Below is a real Springtime Carnivore album, released in 2014.

Due to the way that record streaming works, even though the music has been classified as a Springtime Carnivore record, the person who uploads the music receives the money from the streams, rather than Greta.

She added that she believes when ‘Rogersz’ uploaded the fake tracks onto a music distribution service, they were able to lie about being Springtime Carnivore without any proper checks, leading to the music to be uploaded onto her profiles.

‘It’s shocking. It feels so violating that my listeners, who I care so much about, are getting spammed with some AI slop under my name,’ she said.

Greta said since recovering from spasmodic dysphonia, which she wrote about in her memoir The Lost Voice which is on sale in the UK from May 20, she’s now embracing her new singing and speaking voice.

‘It [The AI album] makes me feel like I want to rebel against everything that is fake, perfect and glossy. For many years I was trying to heal my voice and recover my former “perfect” voice, but I’m now at the point where I feel – let my voice be messed up, weird and it shake, be wobbly and unpredictable, because a machine will never be able to do that.’

Outlining what she thinks the streaming giants need to do to protect artists in the future, she added: ‘I think there needs to be a verification process for identity protection. I would obviously love it if streaming services had better rates for artists that helps real artists make music, which is always going to be better than AI.’

Metro understands that Deezer operates a verification policy for larger artists, but with smaller artists who use distribution services, such as Greta, music is sorted automatically under an artist’s name. Further measures will be taken in the future that Deezer is looking into.

Spotify, Amazon Music and Tidal were contacted by Metro for comment.

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