Is Spotify Enabling Massive Impersonation of Famous Jazz Musicians?

I saw the first warning sign just ten days ago.

But even in that short period of time, the problem seems to have grown significantly. I don’t even want to imagine what the situation might be a month from now.

On February 28, I received an email from reader Biff LaTourette:

Is there anyplace to report synthetic, misattributed content on Spotify, with an eye to deterring such conduct? This morning, Spotify fed me an obviously counterfeit EP, purporting to be a collaboration by Benny Green and Freddy Cole.

Do you know how I could reach out to either Mr. Green or Mr. Cole’s estate? Does one of the royalty guardian outfits cover such infringement? Here’s the Spotify link.

Here’s the Lynkify summary of the same collection proliferated on Soundcloud and Tidal.

This was alarming—but I wanted to make sure this was really impersonation. So I reached out to Benny Green, who is a Facebook friend.

Benny confirmed that this was a fake—he didn’t release this album. He said his manager was working to get it taken down.

But this isn’t easy to do. As far as I can see, there is no easy way to protest illegal tracks on Spotify.

The following day, Benny Green reached out to his fans, asking for their help in finding some way to get Spotify to deal with the problem. But when I checked again today—a full week later—the offending album was still streaming.

And then the problem got worse.

We need to make a difference.

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Three days ago, I hear from another reader—Atlanta-based drummer Justin Chesarek. He had found another impersonation of a well-known jazz musician.

I wanted to share another discovery I made today….I just finished working with a student on Nat Adderley’s “Hippodelphia” when Spotify recommended a new track by Nat. The first sign was that it had a white trumpet player on the thumbnail image, then the name didn’t sound like any tune I had heard of before. It said “released 2026”. Clicked on it, and was subject to some terrible slop recording with no trumpet even on it and a very generic beat. I have uploaded some photos of the images they posted. Zoom in on the 3 handed bass/saxophone player!

I hate this so much. The credits do list Nat as the artist but then somebody else got lyric credit and I can guarantee they are not paying any royalties to Nat’s estate. Is there anything we can do to stop this obvious scam from further devaluing and defacing the artists and their music even more than streaming services have already?

But the scariest part of the story came next.

Just 12 minutes later, I got another email from Biff LaTourette

I hate to bother you again, but it appears someone is scaling up the illicit production and distribution of similar dreck on Spotify. This morning’s Release Radar featured another series of fraudulent misattributions in my feed.

Current victims include Marc Johnson, Jazzmeia Horn, Abbey Lincoln, Holly Cole, Gretchen Parlato, Bob Dorough, Billy Strayhorn, Bud Shank, and Nnenna Freelon. I’ve compiled links below to each misattributed song and album, along with Lynkify links to help assess the extent of proliferation across other platforms. I’ve also included the copyright notices that appear on the album pages of each suspect track.

Nine out of sixty-five cuts are falsely attributed synthetic dross—just shy of fourteen percent of my little feed. The volume of fraudulent slop flooding the platform seems to be reaching critical mass.

Is there an industry watchdog, public interest law firm, or other avenue that might be interested in addressing—or “spanking”—these spammers? If you have any thoughts on effective deterrence strategies, or if additional research on my end would be helpful, please let me know….

As of today, the albums linked all contained just one cut, with the exception of Marc Johnson. His fake EP contained five bogus titles. The production quality is less awful on the Johnson fabrications, compared with the rest.

You can check out these links, and judge for yourself whether these are authentic:

• Marc Johnson

• Jazzmeia Horn

• Abbey Lincoln

• Holly Cole

• Gretchen Parlato

• Bob Dorough

• Billy Strayhorn

• Bud Shank

• Nnenna Freelon

Several of these artists are deceased, and it’s not clear who will step in to defend them from AI impersonation.

Here’ the bottom line: This problem appears to have grown massively in just a few days. And if AI scammers can steal royalties without consequences, this will metastasize like a cancer throughout the music economy.

The fact that Spotify is encouraging listeners to check out these albums is especially troubling. I know so many deserving musicians who will never get this kind of promotion from a streaming service. Meanwhile impersonations are boosted.

Scammers are probably starting with jazz because these musicians have complicated discographies, and few listeners are knowledgeable enough to identify fake music. But if there’s no crackdown, this will quickly expand to other genres—maybe it already has.

Streaming platforms need to provide a simple way for users to flag illegal music. And they need to remove AI impersonations immediately. Companies involved in these scams should be prohibited from using the platform.

If streamers don’t do this, they must face consequences.

I will keep posted on this growing crisis. So check back here for updates.