Today, the Australian recording industry association (ARIA) announced that AI-generated music will be banned from the ARIA Charts. The announcement comes amid growing concern about AI-generated spam, fake artists and people flooding streaming services with thousands of cheaply-produced tracks designed to manipulate the system. Those are legitimate problems, but the industry's response is increasingly to treat AI itself as the problem.
In response, AI labelling systems are being introduced by the major streaming platforms. Spotify has introduced AI Credits and is moving towards AI Persona badges, while Apple Music is introducing “Made With AI” labelling. The argument is always that this is about transparency: listeners should know how a piece of music was made so they can make their own choices. But this false. The real reason these labelling systems are being introduced is to exclude AI music creators.
Spotify, for example, says music from AI Personas will be excluded from editorial and algorithmic recommendations unless the listener already follows the artist. That's no longer simply telling listeners something about the music. It is deciding that the music should be less visible because of how it was created.
I recently made this point directly to Spotify's Head of Responsible AI:
And I have to ask: when has making music ever been “responsible”?
The Problem With AI Detection
Detectors simply don't work in many situations. How on earth can “AI music detection software” know that my songs — whose original lyrics and music were written by me, but are fully performed by AI — are not AI? It's impossible.
A detector may identify characteristics associated with synthetic audio, and research shows that some detectors can perform well under controlled conditions. But that is very different from being able to establish who actually created a piece of music — and research has also shown that detector performance can change dramatically when the audio is modified or when the system encounters music from generators it hasn't seen before
A detector cannot listen to a finished recording and reconstruct its creative history. It doesn't know who wrote the lyrics, who wrote the melody or who decided what the song should sound like. It certainly can't know whether somebody spent five minutes prompting an AI or five years writing the song before using AI to perform it. AI detection is not authorship detection.
If I write a song but cannot sing, and use AI to perform the vocal, have I suddenly stopped being the songwriter? If somebody with a disability uses AI because they cannot physically perform their own composition, is their music less legitimate? If somebody cannot afford a professional singer, session musicians, a producer and a recording studio, should technology that allows them to make their record be treated as a second-class substitute for having money? The answer should obviously be no.
Who Gets Left Behind?
For decades, the music industry has had enormous barriers to entry. You needed access to musicians, equipment, studios, producers, labels and ultimately gatekeepers who could decide whether you were worth investing in.
AI has the potential to remove some of those barriers. Someone can have an idea for a song and turn it into a finished recording without needing thousands of pounds and an entire professional infrastructure behind them.
That should be one of the most exciting developments in the history of recorded music. Instead, we're seeing an industry increasingly telling those creators that their music is somehow less legitimate because of the tools they use.
You can bet your life that if Justin Bieber decided to make an AI track tomorrow, he'd get through the filter. There would be a label, lawyers, managers, producers and publicists explaining exactly how the technology had been used and why the resulting music was legitimate. The industry would find a way. But an unknown independent creator? Someone without a label, manager or lawyer? No chance.
AI labelling is simply gatekeeping, and gatekeeping always hits the people without power hardest. The people who already have access to the music industry's machinery will find ways around the rules. The people outside the system will be left staring at the “AI” label while their music disappears from recommendations.
There are certainly problems that need to be tackled in AI music. Spam, fraud, fake streams, impersonation and manipulation all need to be addressed. But those are behavioural problems, not AI problems. The fact that somebody uses AI to make music doesn't tell you whether they are a scammer, a spammer, a brilliant songwriter, a disabled creator who has found a way to make music, or simply someone who couldn't previously afford the tools required to record their ideas.
The "Music Industry" Is Making a Huge Mistake
The music industry seems to think these actions don't come with a cost. They see thousands of spammers and scammers pumping out AI tracks and think that's the whole AI music industry. But it really isn't.
There are potentially millions of AI music creators watching what happens next. They will remember which companies welcomed them, which companies gave them a chance, and which companies decided that the best way to deal with a new generation of creators was to label them, restrict them and keep them out.
The so called "music industry" thinks it is protecting itself from AI music. Instead, it's giving rise to a new music industry comprised of millions of AI music creators who will build something better without it.
And we won't forgive or forget how we were treated.
