> Tidal will hold AI-generated music to a higher standard of content integrity. We will not tolerate AI-generated music that exploits an individual’s or group’s music, name or likeness, deceives listeners, or diminishes the quality of our service.

I think this is a very reasonable approach, and probably also the best way to treat AI-powered copyright infringement as a whole. Just like we don't penalize artists for consuming content unless they produce actually infringing content, we should set the same focus for AI systems.

> Starting today, AI-generated music will not be monetizable. We are only in the beginning of the era of AI-generated music.

Don't really agree that this follows from the stated principle here ("... ensuring royalties go to original works produced, written and performed by people"), but will definitely help with spam etc.

Tie it to in-person concerts and it might actually work as a business, as well as logistically – maybe the company can be a record producer in disguise and physically meet every musician they host.

The music industry has stepped up its efforts globally to crack down on small businesses that play copyrighted music. They actually hire people to go into these places and spot violations.

People blame social media for the death of the monoculture but I think music rights holders have done a fair share of the damage to themselves.

I wish Youtube Music would offer some relief from the flood of AI music on their platform. My frustrations with YTM are exacerbated by the fact that it has the absolute minimum in functionality when it comes to browsing or searching.

I don't understand the user hostile nature of so many services these days when it comes to content discovery. We all know the data is there, but making it available for the user to actually browse or god forbid a modicum of search filters is like some forbidden fruit.

My Tidal "feed" is full of new releases that are clearly AI-generated. They use the same artist name as artists that I really like, but the music is clearly not from the artist as advertised.

I have no problem with AI-generated music, I just don't want someone trying to spoof the artists I am interested in.

I think this needs more clarity. I can think of a lot of different ways AI is used in music today as a part of the song generation process and not sure whether or not this definition would apply to it. They specifically mention developments in "text-prompted generation" but if anything that confuses the issue more, for example what about training on specific music.

This isn't a comment on how expansive or narrow the definition should be, just that they need to spell it out more to allow for consistent application (to say nothing of enforcement). If someone uses ChatGPT for lyrics, but writes the instrumentals themselves, does this policy apply? I genuinely have no idea.

Would love for YouTube to follow suit on this

Here we are. music is great, people do not suspect it's ai, artist behind AI is making money. Real work, real people are happy. It's just the voice and instruments are not real. How is it different from club music made in fruity loops? This music is just more complicated, hence no fruity loop. With AI you don't need to assemble the entire band do to funk music. Isn't that democratize access to music production?

I know professional musicians that will use AI models like Suno as an aid to their tracks - mostly where they'd previously use samples or program things themselves. In these cases, where the track may be x% AI and (1-x)% Human performance, where x is very small, I think monetization or even copyright shouldn't be too difficult.

But I also know people that use tools like Suno for everything, where every single aspect of the song: Lyrics, music, production is all done by AI tools. They basically just prompt some style and vibe they want, and will upload the result. In these cases, I don't think monetization or copyright should be possible.

Then again, it is difficult to know how much AI someone used to generate their tracks, so I'm not sure how this could be enforced. I also know people that are earning very good money off their (entirely) Suno-generated tracks.

This would then become something similar to how legal tech where a license is required to practice law relies on a few lawyers sitting as a gate after the AI

It’s pretty cool technology. You just ask for a certain feeling to be evoked and you can have it done. Magical.

> AI music generation tools are changing how music is created and distributed. As this technology evolves, Tidal is introducing platform standards to protect artists, their craft, and inform listeners.

> Here are the highlights of our new AI Policy:

> - Tidal will identify and tag AI-generated music in our app. Listeners will see an "AI" badge next to music we detect as wholly AI-generated.

> - Tidal will not tolerate AI-generated music that impersonates an artist or group, or that facilitates fraudulent activity. We're implementing automatic tools to remove these releases immediately and on an ongoing basis.

> - Tidal will not allow music that is 100% AI-generated to be monetized. No royalties will go to such releases, nor will AI-generated uploads be eligible for direct-to-fan sales.

> - We will expand these policies to music that is substantially AI-generated when AI detection technology is sufficiently reliable to do so.

> You'll start seeing these changes from July 15.

> Check out the full policy here. To learn more, please visit our FAQ.

> For the music,

> The Tidal Team

All in all seems reasonable. There's definitely been a wave of cheap slop flooding Tidal's library lately and removing the incentives for it seems like the exact correct approach to stemming that tide.

The only thing worrying to me is the use of “AI detection technology”; that stuff is notorious for both false positives and false negatives, and it seems to only be getting worse as AI is getting better at hiding its “tells”. As long as there's an appeals process with a human in the loop it should work out fine.

I'm also curious about how they'll define “substantially AI-generated”, i.e. where they'll draw that line. Human vocals over an AI backing track? AI vocals over a human backing track? All human performers, but using instruments with AI-generated sounds?

Take away the attraction to the grifters and you reduce the issue.

Of course this does not eliminate the problem of the streaming platforms tolertating AI generated work so that they do not need to pay as much out for your subscription fee.

Personally, if there were a decent Spotify alternative that had a zero tolerance to gen AI policy, I'd switch without a second thought.

Okey, that's all I needed to know. They could just put this one sentence in the doc and be done with it.

If you use ai tools not for full generation of a song but perhaps a bass track would they allow monetizing?

I strongly agree on labeling the generated content.

Edit: Nevermind, see riddley's comment. That's what I get for being logged in, I guess?

Which is to say, there are a lot of people who think "they can tell AI" in music, wherein you can cue the famous picture of the airplane with the bulletholes.

I'm not sure what you can do about it, and part of me hates it too -- but youtube has absolutely given me 100% AI generated music that's full of soul and better than, say, Bruno Mar,s IMHO.

(For those interested, my two examples would be the gospel "Thong Song" and the fake rock-n-roll dis track against 50 cent "by TI's Son," 2 quarters...)

Anyway the battle with slop is curation. Eurodance by AI is as shitty as eurodance by humans.

Tl;dr. Another one bites the dust.

AKA: We will take the value, if any, AI-generated music gives, but we will not be paying royalties. This is a contradictory statement. How does the AI-generated music give value if the generated content is inherently worthless?