Summary
Kai Slater, as Sharp Pins, has reclaimed the essence of human music in 2025, releasing two acclaimed albums as the music environment faces the growing influence of algorithms and AI-generated content.
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I remain entrenched like Japanese soldier Hiroo Onoda, refusing to believe that the war is over and that we have lost. My island in the Pacific is a human musical curation; the enemy is herding driven by commercial algorithms. I emphasize the mission, begun in the 1990s, of sorting, critiquing and (attempting to) provide cultural maps, a function that journalism has abandoned, drowned in engagement metrics.
That’s why the average listener will probably finish 2025 without knowing that the two best international albums of the year came from the same mind: that of Kai Slater, a 20-year-old from Chicago. Under the nickname Sharp Pins, Slater delivered what the streaming system struggles to bury: music that is organic, imperfect and human.
Slater is also part of Lifeguard, and the Sharp Pins project began in 2023 as a counterpoint to modern production standards, operating within the DIY ethic. He rejects digital polishing in favor of analog recordings on a Tascam Portastudios or cassettes, resulting in a sound that seeks the height of 1960s Power Pop, that of the Beatles and the Kinks, filtered through the lo-fi aesthetic of Guided by Voices.
Productivity is high and constant. In 2023, he released Turtle Rock, affirming his sonic identity, followed in 2024 by the first digital version of Radio DDR. These records solidified their position in the Chicago independent scene, proving that their method of working was not an exercise in nostalgia but a deliberate aesthetic choice for volume and consistency.
The year 2025 defined the relevance of the project with two central movements. In March, Radio DDR’s expanded reissue expanded the scope of tracks like “(I Wanna) Be Your Girl.” The follow-up arrived on November 21 with the album Balloon Balloon Balloon (the other best of the year), led by the single “Queen of Globes and Mirrors”. The critical reception validated Slater’s ability to maintain the authenticity of the home recording without sounding like pastiche.
For 2026, the schedule confirms the physical existence of the group, contrary to the artists’ algorithms. January’s U.S. itinerary includes the Bowery Ballroom in New York and Third Man Records in Detroit. In February, the project crosses the Atlantic for dates in Spain, via Madrid, Barcelona and Granada, bringing the organic performance to the stage.
So Spotify?
On the other hand, the scenario is scorched earth for true, original, legitimate music, 18-year-old scotch. The streaming music discovery environment has become a minefield. Although Spotify avoids disclosing data that exposes its vulnerabilities, figures from its competitor Deezer serve as a guide: around 18% of all content downloaded daily is generated by artificial intelligence. As distributors operate in bulk, sending the same files to all services, it is statistically reasonable to predict that the influx to Spotify reflects this reality: nearly a fifth of new downloads are not of human origin.
The platform’s response reveals the industrial dimension of the problem. As of September 2025, there were reports of 75 million low-quality or AI-generated leads being removed over a twelve-month period. The volume is disproportionate to the 11 million total artist profiles in the database. This indicates not only excessive production, but also a massive fraud mechanism in which bots and content farms upload thousands of files to overwhelm the system and capture fractions of royalties.
The irony lies in the origin. Sweden, birthplace of Spotify, has become an expert in the creation of “Ghost Artists”: human producers record generic ambient music pieces (sleep piano, ambient jazz) and distribute them under hundreds of fake pseudonyms, like “Sleepy Piano Guy,” accumulating billions of plays without ever existing. The second front, “Synthetic Artists,” where the audio, cover art, and bio are 100% algorithmically generated, is the group that is actually driving the growth of that 18% share of daily uploads.
Spotify supports this scenario via a gray zone policy. The company officially states that it does not ban music created by AI, but only “artificial streaming” (robots listening to music). In other words, if the listener is human, the fake artist is validated and monetized. The practical result is that when accessing the “New Releases” section today, the user browses a catalog in which almost one title in five is a synthetic product, created to fill the silence and generate income, and not art.
Daniel Ek, founder of the platform, operates in a logic opposite to that of the counterculture that generated rock: he invests in defense and military technology companies. The unspoken motto is “Make war, not peace.” The algorithm doesn’t suggest what you’re interested in; suggests what costs the least and brings the most value to the company. The system prefers that you listen to a generic piano created by code so as not to pay royalties to anyone.
Against this machine of war and fraud, it’s good that Sharp Pins exists.
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