10 biggest AI music artists have made $6.1 million on Spotify and YouTube, report suggests

Amid growing debate over AI-generated music and streaming platforms’ responsibility to protect human artists, AI editing application Kapwing has released a study examining the top-earning AI “artists” on YouTube and Spotify. Across both platforms, the top 10 AI figures have generated approximately $6.1 million in revenue. Spotify’s top 10 AI artists have earned around $2.38 million from roughly 595 million streams. 

Estimated AI revenue on YouTube was even higher, reaching $3.7 million earned from 1.75 billion views. The top earner on the platform is Cherry 葵 Nightcore, whose near-daily uploads of nightcore and EDM songs have generated about $2 million in revenue. While the pseudonymous creator says she remixes music using traditional production equipment, the Kapwing report suggests the tracks themselves may be AI-generated. 

On Spotify, a 1950s-style blues act named Enlly Blue earned its uploader around $380,000 from more than 95 million streams. Other big earners across YouTube and Spotify include the country persona Breaking Rust, the R&B persona Xania Monet, and the metal-rock persona BOI WHAT, which uses AI-generated SpongeBob vocals layered over a human artist’s metalcore recordings. 

Comedian King Willonius, best known for creating “BBL Drizzy,” has uploaded more than 500 charting tracks across platforms—more than any other AI creator named in the Kapwing study—raising broader questions about how much human oversight platforms should expect or require for AI-assisted releases. Another act, synth-rock “group” Masters of Prophecy, garnered 30 million YouTube subscribers in less than a year, growth that researchers Ryan Broderick and Adam Bumas have called “suspicious.” Nonetheless, the authors ask, “On a platform increasingly powered—and populated—by AI, what does inauthentic growth even mean?”

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