"What a strange time we live in, when an imposter can write a tune, or have a toaster write it for him": People are pretending to be Alan Parsons and he's not happy about it

Alan Parsons has become the latest victim of an artist impersonation scam, and he's not happy about it.

In such scams, the perpetrators upload their own music (often low-quality, AI-generated tracks) to streaming platforms under the name of an established or upcoming artist, or tag well-known artists as collaborators without their permission. This is done to appear on the legitimate artist's profile and to benefit from their audience and Release Radar placements.

"It has come to my attention that a few clever and unscrupulous scammers have been posting music online while pretending to be me," says Parsons. "They’ve been gathering up streams, attention, and possibly even invitations to tea under my name… These blatant infringements have nothing whatsoever to do with me.

"Let me be crystal clear – I have not released these songs, authorised these songs, hummed these songs, or even accidentally sat on a keyboard and come up with anything resembling these songs.

"What a strange time we live in, when an imposter can write a tune, or have a toaster write it for him, slap my name on it as the artist, and then have a faceless algorithm give it life. While I admire their efficiency, I do find it rather disappointing that scammers are now turning their robotic identities against musicians everywhere.

"This sort of thing is happening to a great many artists these days, and the corporate entities that run these online streaming and digital distribution services seem to just be turning a blind eye.

"This tomfoolery doesn’t just confuse listeners, it dilutes the talent of those artists, muddles their identity, and chips away at the integrity that takes years, or in my case, decades, to build. I spent most of my life finding my voice in the music industry, and I’d like to keep it human, thank you very much.

"I encourage everyone to double-check the source of the music they’re listening to and support real, walking, talking, crumpet-eating artists.

"We are still here. Slightly wrinkled, perhaps, but gloriously human."

Other recent victims of artist impersonation scams include Toto, Yes, Architects, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Uncle Tupelo, Swans and Asia, while several dead artists – including country stars Blaze Foley and Guy Clark – have had "new" songs appear on their profile pages.

Earlier this year, Spotify revealed it had removed 75 million "spammy" tracks from the platform over the previous 12 months.

"Because music flows through a complex supply chain, bad actors sometimes exploit gaps to push incorrect content onto artist profiles," a spokesman for the company told NPR. The streaming giant recently launched a tool that allows artists to flag songs that shouldn't appear on their profile pages before they go live.