Tidal to Label AI-Generated Music, Ban Royalties from AI Song Streams

The music streaming service Tidal said on Monday that artists uploading music wholly or substantially created using AI will have them label them as such — and those songs won’t be eligible for royalties.

The service’s new AI policy goes into effect July 15, and it also applies to Tidal’s independent artist franchise Tidal Upload. Tidal will also ban AI-generated music associated with “fraudulent activity,” a category that includes songs impersonating established artists and efforts to “deceive listeners.”

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“Artists should have the freedom to create with AI tools, and listeners should have the autonomy to choose the type of content they consume,” the new AI policy reads. “Due to the problems associated with the influx of AI-generated content, we will hold AI-generated content to a higher standard of content integrity.” 

Tidal said that while AI tools have existed in music production for some time, they have recently become “more commonplace and advanced.” Therefore, such labels are necessary, and the service plans to start its mandatory labels with wholly generated songs before expanding it to songs substantially generated with AI “as AI-detection methods become more reliable.”

The move differs from Spotify and Apple Music’s requirements, which place the onus for providing AI labels on artists and distributors. Apple Music told partners in a March memo that AI-generated music accounted for less than 1% of all plays each week and that it had internal tools to detect whether artists’ work was generated by AI, according to Billboard.

Robert Andersen, a principal designer at Tidal developer Block who leads design for the streaming service, wrote on X that Tidal receives “an overwhelming amount of AI-generated music from 3rd party distributors.”

“It has been clear for some time that we need to evolve our platform and standards to deal with this new type of submission to our catalog,” he wrote, “so today we are announcing an AI-generated music policy designed to provide a great experience for our listeners, while protecting the authenticity and livelihoods of artists and rightholders.”

Banning royalties is perhaps the most significant addition to the policy, as Tidal has typically paid artists more than competitors such as Spotify. Spotify acknowledged in its AI policy that it was a “platform for licensed music where royalties are paid based on listener engagement, and all music is treated equally, regardless of the tools used to make it.”

In Tidal’s case, the company acknowledged the ongoing debate over officially licensed work used in AI-generated music, adding that “this debate will continue as the technology advances and rightsholders and AI music platforms develop licensing models.”

“Tidal’s priority is ensuring royalties go to original works directly produced, written, and performed by people,” it said. “We will therefore not knowingly attribute royalties to music we identify as wholly AI-generated.”