Sienna Rose’s voice is somewhat reminiscent of that of the American singer SZA, her beats are reminiscent of nineties R’n’B and the chords in her songs are reminiscent of classic Motown soul.
Actress and pop star Selena Gomez obviously liked this; after the Golden Globes in mid-January, she accompanied an Instagram carousel with the Rose song “Where Your Warmth Begins”. However, she soon removed it again. Because Sienna Rose is probably not a real person – everything about her should be with artificial intelligence have been generated.
Sienna Rose still has quantifiable success. According to Spotify, she currently reaches over four million monthly listeners on the music platform and her songs have been streamed millions of times. She’s not the only artificial artist who has real-world success. The folk bard Jacub is also making a name for himself, his song “Jag vet, du är inte min” (“I know you don’t belong to me”) is climbing the viral charts with Spotify’s most played songs in Sweden – and was excluded from the official charts because his music is also said to be AI-generated.
Sienna Rose and Jacub are not isolated cases. The amount of AI music on the streaming platforms is increasing rapidly. Since January 2025, the Deezer service has been identifying the AI music uploaded there using specially developed technology and clearly labeling it for listeners.
People can hardly recognize AI anymore
Even back then, the French service reported uploading 10,000 AI music tracks per day, and according to the latest figures there are already 60,000. That’s over a million and a half pieces of AI per month. And since Deezer is supplied by the same digital distributors as every other streaming service, a similar number can also be assumed on other platforms.
AI music inevitably reaches an audience: 18 to 44 year olds listen to it for up to three hours a week – this is according to a survey by the investment bank Morgan Stanley, to which the online magazine “Sherwood News” from the fintech company Robinhood Markets recently referred. The only question is what exactly that means – little is known about the specific results of the survey, which is only intended for financial industry insiders. In any case, it remains to be seen: do these people also do this consciously and with pleasure?
What little is known about Morgan Stanley’s survey raises doubts. On the one hand, only Deezer currently makes it transparent that the music of Sienna Rose and Jacub, for example, is AI-generated. The information provided by respondents can only be based on estimates. According to a study carried out by the market research institute Ipsos on behalf of Deezer, 97 percent of people can no longer distinguish between AI-generated and human-made music. So it’s not just Selena Gomez who feels this way. Who can say how much AI music he or she listens to on a regular basis?
It is also striking that most of those surveyed think they consume AI music primarily via YouTube and Tiktok. Music plays a big role there overall, but it is mostly used as a background soundtrack. The experimental electronic music legend Aphex Twin, for example, was briefly able to reach more monthly listeners on YouTube than the pop star Taylor Swift because his 25-year-old piece “QKThr” was used in many “shorts” (as short videos in vertical format are called on the platform). That doesn’t mean that he has more fans than Swift or that most listeners know who the soundtrack even comes from.
The numbers initially seem to suggest that AI music is now being accepted among young adults. But a closer look at the sparse information about the survey results suggests a different interpretation: there is confusion about what is real and what is AI-generated. This is particularly true where music is a nice secondary matter. The same can be said about the streaming platform where Sienna Rose and Jacub are so successful: Spotify.
AI music should be unobtrusive
The Spotify success is largely based on artificial intelligence. In 2014, the Swedish company acquired the Echo Nest company. Using their artificially intelligent evaluation of music tracks, Spotify was able to optimize its personalized recommendations. AI was the unique selling point that enabled Spotify to become the market leader. Through them, the platform was able to offer the automated background soundtrack for every occasion.
After a decade of speculation, author Liz Pelly revealed the secret of the “fake artists” who populated mood playlists like “Piano Chill” in her book “Mood Machine: Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist,” published in early 2025.
According to Pelly’s research, behind this was Spotify’s internal program “perfect fit content”: The platform commissioned production companies to supply them with anonymized wallpaper music, which Spotify placed en masse in prominent playlists. Spotify paid comparatively low royalties for this and thus saved money, but because of the billions of plays it was still extremely worthwhile for the production companies. The audience didn’t notice anything.
With the AI music pumped millions of times on Spotify, anonymous third parties are now perfecting the trick with the precisely tailored content: whether it’s the AI band Velvet Sundown, which became famous in the summer, or Sienna Rose and Jacub – they all imitate popular genres and offer themselves as everyday sound backdrops. A big part of their recipe for success is not standing out at all, but rather blending in with the flow of sameness of the playlist ecosystem. Spotify is gradually becoming Slopify (the English term “slop” or mansch is used to describe low-quality, AI-generated mass content).
Spotify algorithm could be crucial
A comparison with other platforms shows that Sienna Rose and Co. almost only generate a lot of plays on Spotify. The suspicion is that this has primarily to do with the algorithmic logics that prevail there. The Sienna Rose song “Into the Blue,” which has been streamed over eight million times on the service, only has 330,000 plays on YouTube. A look at the artist profile of the soulless soul diva on Deezer reveals even deeper: On the platform, where AI music is consistently removed from algorithmic recommendations, Sienna Rose only has just under 300 “fans”.
When asked, Deezer describes listeners who proactively engage with artists’ music and, for example, favor the music, as fans. Because AI music is virtually unheard of in Deezer’s playlist ecosystem, the platform can provide concrete numbers about how much AI music is played intentionally and knowingly, in contrast to the mere play count on Spotify. According to the latest figures, AI music accounted for between 1 and 3 percent of all plays, it was said at the end of January.
These are still very few plays, and according to Deezer, most of them are as fake as the music: 85 percent of AI music plays come about through streaming manipulation – bots stream bot music. And the rest? “We cannot speak for other platforms,” the company tells taz. “But on Deezer, legitimate streams of AI music are largely driven by curiosity.” The media coverage of Sienna Rose and Co. is likely to be the driving factor.
AI music is everywhere, but it’s not listened to much everywhere. The numbers do not mean that the slop is accepted, heard proactively and liked by a substantial part of the audience. Although hardly anyone can tell the difference between AI-generated and human-made music, the difference remains important to many.