11 ms·

Tidal AI Policy

308 points by hn8726 3mo ago

throw_m239339 3mo ago
That's fair, allow AI slop but tag obvious AI slop as such. Hopefully they add an option to hide detected AI slop, something I wish Youtube had for instance.
- DerArzt 3mo ago
  Also they aren't paying out for AI generated content.
cnobody 3mo ago
Funny, Tidal want pay royalties on it.
mc32 3mo ago
I like what I see from their policy. They accept that it’s part of the industry landscape and also say it’s not monetizeable. They will likely revisit and revise their stance as things change. I strongly agree on labeling the generated content.
pier25 3mo ago
Good now add a setting to hide all AI content.
- dainiusse 3mo ago
  It will be super premium pro plan:)
  - DrewADesign 3mo ago
    Maybe on a less expensive super premium plus plan, you only see ai-generated content, but it’s at the highest quality streaming tier.
jorisw 3mo ago
Allow AI, but require labeling as such, and demonetize. Would love for YouTube to follow suit on this
- spaqin 3mo ago
  Would you really like to take action and earn less money? Morality is dead...
  - jdiff 3mo ago
    What connection to morality is there from taking action and earning less money? I can think of many morally positive situations that would match this odd vague phrasing you're presenting.
    - bigfishrunning 3mo ago
      I think the parent poster is saying that if there's a "this is AI, don't give me any money" checkbox, most people will lie and not check it, because they do not have the amount of morality it takes to accept demonetization.
      - jorisw 3mo ago
        I think they’re talking about YouTube not wanting to miss revenue by taking similar measures
riddley 3mo ago
Interestingly, this is a 404 if you're logged into Tidal.
- _flux 3mo ago
  Works for me (TM). Maybe you lost CDN-lottery?
  - stusmall 3mo ago
    I had the same issue when logged in. I opened a private tab and it worked.
- jordemort 3mo ago
  Works for me, they also emailed it to me this morning
fxwin 3mo ago
> Tidal will accept AI-generated music. > 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.
- VladVladikoff 3mo ago
  The flood of AI music on their platform is becuase people can make money off it. If you turn off that faucet you stop the flooding.
  - sarjann 3mo ago
    I think this is also a reason why X has gotten worse. They pay people for engagement.
    - stronglikedan 3mo ago
      [flagged]
      - selectodude 3mo ago
        You get both the white nationalist and the antisemite sides, yes.
        vlian2088 3mo ago
        as opposed to ye olde twitter where only wholesome racism was allowed https://web.archive.org/web/20181130015402/https://pasteboard.co/HzdB4wI.png https://web.archive.org/web/20181130015402/https://pasteboar... https://web.archive.org/web/20180827011518/https://pasteboard.co/HzdBkuf.png https://web.archive.org/web/20180827011518/https://pasteboar... https://web.archive.org/web/20180827011519/https://pasteboard.co/HzdBAUN.png https://web.archive.org/web/20180827011519/https://pasteboar...
jeremyberemy 3mo ago
Am I the only one getting a "Page not found"? Edit: Nevermind, see riddley's comment. That's what I get for being logged in, I guess?
akshaydeshraj 3mo ago
A very reasonable policy, prevents AI Slop from flooding the platform due to misaligned creator / consumer incentives
sph 3mo ago
> Tidal will accept AI-generated music Tl;dr. Another one bites the dust.
- pier25 3mo ago
  it won't be monetized so there's zero incentive to upload AI slop to Tidal
  - suyash 3mo ago
    They say only wholly produced music using AI can't be monetized, nothing stopping it's 95% AI and 5% Human. Also no concerete definitions of what that even means.
    - Imustaskforhelp 3mo ago
      I think that they mentioned both wholly produced music or substantially produced music. I think that it will be a fuzzy line but for example in the case of 95% AI and 5% human probably won't work.
  - have_faith 3mo ago
    Why would someone doing that voluntarily tag their content as AI? they can make money by hiding it.
  - wakamoleguy 3mo ago
    There is only zero incentive if the filter detects AI music reliably. It's still a race between effective detection and cost to generate content, isn't it?
    - pier25 3mo ago
      Suno et al don't really have a incentive to hide the fact that their tracks are generated using AI. Quite the contrary, the only way they won't get sued to death by UMG and the other big labels is to disclose AI generated tracks.
techpression 3mo ago
Love that they don't pay any royalties for AI music right now, unlike Spotify.
- k__ 3mo ago
  So, their incentive is to promote AI music, since they don't have to pay royalties for them.
  - esafak 3mo ago
    How so? People want to avoid it.
    - et-al 3mo ago
      Listeners will likely want to avoid it. But "creators" pushing AI music won't tag their slop as such because they want to monetize (surprise, they're not doing it for the love of the game). So this hinges on Tidal being able to reliably identify AI-generated music.
    - brk 3mo ago
      True, though it seems like at least 75% of the traffic on various social media and streaming sites is content that people want to avoid, yet there it is.
    - elicash 3mo ago
      I don't agree with the overall point, but what they are saying is that if Tidal makes a "lofi hip hop mix beats" playlist, then they have to pay a nickel to an artist if they direct the user to their song, but NOTHING if they direct to someone who uploaded an AI song. So that's an extra nickel of profit for pointing to the AI song. In reality, I don't think this is how it'll shake out. But it's a valid argument.
elicash 3mo ago
> Tidal defines AI-generated music as music that is wholly or substantially generated by generative artificial intelligence. 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.
- mvdtnz 3mo ago
  They actually don't need to spell it out more. They can use discretion. This avoids hair-splitting from pedants like you because discretion is discretion and there's no argument.
- jimmypk 3mo ago
  [flagged]
- asah 3mo ago
  +1 - and what about an entirely AI generated song with a human who adds a 0.1 sec hum. Or even this hum is copypasted from another human generated song.
gwbas1c 3mo ago
I'm a Tidal subscriber, something like this is needed. 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.
- esafak 3mo ago
  Spotify is the same. This impersonation ought to be illegal.
  - gwbas1c 3mo ago
    I'm pretty sure it is. Effective enforcement is a different matter.
  - somehnguy 3mo ago
    Do you have some impersonated artist names I would be able to look up? This isn't a thing I have (knowingly) run into on Spotify yet and I'm really curious to see more
    - yellowapple 3mo ago
      Yes (as in the band Yes) on Tidal at one point had a bunch of probably-AI-generated albums that Tidal shoved into Yes' discography because the “artist” included “Yes” in the name (with album titles like “Yes, it's raining” and other such nonsense). Thankfully it seems Tidal's cleaned those out.
    - gwbas1c 3mo ago
      "Yes" and "BT". I've also some across some AI-generated slop under the name "Rush". There's someone releasing a new track almost every day as "BT" that is clearly not "BT". I didn't see the naming issue that the other reply had with "Yes", but I do frequently see their name pop up with slop.
  - consensus1 3mo ago
Invictus0 3mo ago
How are they going to detect the AI music?
- brk 3mo ago
  RFC 3514 is being repurposed as an "AI Bit", all AI-generated content will be required to set this bit during transfers.
  - swingboy 3mo ago
    How is this enforceable?
    - jdiff 3mo ago
      That's the joke of RFC 3514. Setting the evil bit of a packet to 0 means it is harmless and no defensive action should be taken. Secure systems should defend against packets with the evil bit set to 1. Insecure systems may choose to crash, be penetrated, etc.
  - rvz 3mo ago
    I cannot wait. Just in time for next year. Coming soon in 276 days from now.
- crtasm 3mo ago
  Maybe licensing existing tech, e.g. https://newsroom-deezer.com/2026/01/ai-generated-music-deezer-selling-detection-tool/ https://newsroom-deezer.com/2026/01/ai-generated-music-deeze...
dude250711 3mo ago
A tide of slop.
keiferski 3mo ago
I really hope someone makes a music platform in the future that is verified as human-made. Music is about connecting to human emotions, not poor facsimiles of it. 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.
- techterrier 3mo ago
  this is called the pub
- 1123581321 3mo ago
  That would be interesting and could start simply. CDBaby was what, $20 per record and self-serve. Maybe each record on this new platform costs $200 and is accompanied by an employee-uploaded video of the artist uploading the record.
- wiremine 3mo ago
  > Music is about connecting to human emotions, not poor facsimiles of it "art is in the eye of the beholder." I listen to a lot of EDM, which can be very mechanical, but I personally have strong emotional connection to. I personally would welcome AI-generated music as an alternative to human-made. To be clear: I do agree a "human-verified" system would be great, but I don't think it would be black and white. And I would guess that eventually AI music will be better than a lot of human made music.
  - keiferski 3mo ago
    You will probably be able to listen to machine-generated music on most major platforms. I just hope there’s one which excludes all of that. Personally I think it’s a bit like cultural junk food: it has the appearance of real food, but leaves one hungry afterward. Which really isn’t all that surprising – music isn’t just some random collection of patterns, it’s intimately tied to real culture. Current AI software is only ever going to copy and regurgitate human culture, not make meaningful creations from scratch.
preetham_rangu 3mo ago
The detection problem is genuinely hard. Even desktop AI agents I've been working with recently can control Spotify, fill forms, navigate apps — all indistinguishable from human interaction at the OS level. If that's hard to detect at the application layer, detecting AI-generated music at the audio layer seems like a cat and mouse game that Tidal will struggle to win without self-reporting from uploaders.
- butlike 3mo ago
  I feel like audio-level heuristics will be easier, but ultimately who's to say? > Generative models synthesize sound mathematically. These synthesis methods leave unnatural dips, specific spectral noise profiles, or phase alignments that rarely occur in real, human-recorded audio
  - marmarama 3mo ago
    Then the slop merchants will simply move to controlling a DAW with AI and use the same software synths that everyone else does. It's a little more involved and slower, but far from hard. Ultimately this isn't really solvable without a way of marking audio with a verifiable signature that it was produced by a specific human, with some kind of reputation algorithm.
  - waffletower 3mo ago
    This is a totally fascist musical bias -- I have been using spectral techniques in music since the late 1980s. It has been common for decades. "Unnatural" spectral packet distortion is a component of a wide-breadth of existing music that pre-dates modern generative AI. I am confident that the false positives will be overwhelming and unfair to many artists. Such a cowardly and lossy solution.
- Nifty3929 3mo ago
  You are correct, but I think having a good policy - and trying earnestly to enforce it - is a good start, even if that enforcement is very imperfect.
- cseleborg 3mo ago
butlike 3mo ago
> Starting today, AI-generated music will not be monetizable. 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?
- purerandomness 3mo ago
  That's the neat part: AI Slop "music" will have to stop pretending that it has any value.
  - butlike 3mo ago
    I think my comment is being misunderstood. I don't think AI music has any value. I'm just calling out that Tidal's right and left hands are saying two different things. The left hand: AI music has no monetary value. The right hand: AI music is valuable enough to host on the platform. This is the schism that doesn't make sense to me.
postalcoder 3mo ago
AI music has taken over small businesses like coffee shops and restaurants. AI music drives me nuts because, to me, it still is very much deep in an uncanny valley. That said, I can't blame the businesses because they are all (dis)incentive driven. 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.
- Grombobulous 3mo ago
  This is all about streaming platforms commandeering royalties away from artists. The way royalties get assigned is based on a percentage of your listening versus your monthly payment. For example, spend an entire month listening to Taylor Swift’s new album, she gets the entire royalty share. But if you listen to the album 100 times but then listen to lofi beats 900 times, Taylor only gets 10%. The “earnings per stream” number you’ll see cited is only an average and varies greatly because there’s only so much money to go around since your listening is unlimited. But now you have services like Spotify that are removing real songs from “mood” playlists and replacing them with AI music that directs royalties toward Spotify. Another factor that has happened: record labels have been working to screw over artists so much that they actually negotiated lower royalty rates with Spotify in exchange for company stock. Giving up royalties but then instead owning a part of Spotify effectively directs money away artists and toward the labels.
  - AlexandrB 3mo ago
    > For example, spend an entire month listening to Taylor Swift’s new album, she gets the entire royalty share. > But if you listen to the album 100 times but then listen to lofi beats 900 times, Taylor only gets 10%. Hahaha, I wish this was how it worked, but it's not. At all. Suppose I spend all month listening only to Fugazi. Now some miniscule tiny fraction of my (and everyone else's) monthly payment will go to Fugazi. The biggest portion of my monthly payment will go to Taylor Swift because she got the most plays on the platform. This means it actually matters very little what I listen to because I listen to only a few hours of music a week. A coffee shop running Spotify will generate 16+ hours of listening per day and this will determine who gets my subscription money far more than my actions will. What you're describing would be like heaven for independent artists compared to the status quo. Having said that, you're right that AI music is partially about funnelling more money to the streaming platform. Even before AI generated music, Spotify was cutting deals with "chill vibes" artists where they would receive a smaller payment per play than a "normal" artist[1]. Mysteriously those artists ended up getting placed on "chill vibes" playlists more often than you would expect. Funny how that works. I expect the same chicanery is happening with AI. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversy_over_fake_artists_on_Spotify https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversy_over_fake_artists_...
hmokiguess 3mo ago
I wonder if we are gonna see an emerging market where musicians are hired to provide support for AI music farms, I feel like gig musicians can easily cover/learn to play anything without much trouble 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
- cseleborg 3mo ago
  That's a genuinely grim thought, but not unrealistic either. I'll have to chew on that one, it's interesting.
TrackerFF 3mo ago
I'm a musician by hobby, but used to make a living of it in my younger days. AI music has come to stay, can't do anything about it - the cat is out of the bag. 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.
- javier123454321 3mo ago
  I have a great solution. They can point chatGPT to their AI generated slop and get AI generated enjoyment from others appreciating their "Art". Meanwhile, keep that out of my sphere.
- threetonesun 3mo ago
  Honestly I don't know that I care about AI generated tracks, like you said it's the same argument one could make for samples or drum machines or synths or a dozen other previous technologies in the music space. What I actually miss is music curation and discovery, instead of a just a giant slop-pile of new music that I can't possible sort through, or an algorithm defines for me. I'd love some Internet Pirate Radio. If someone wants to sort through the best all-AI tracks and run those, that'd be cool. I don't want an AI to pick the best AI tracks.
tiahura 3mo ago
Interesting discussion with Jeff Bridges on Suno: https://x.com/adityarao310/status/2071488913630204209/video/1 https://x.com/adityarao310/status/2071488913630204209/video/...
- jimt1234 3mo ago
  I think the question Theo asks is the most relevant: Do you think [an AI-generated song] holds as much value? And I think we've been asking this question for years now, in different contexts: recorded music (records), copyable music (dual cassette recorders, CD-burners, mp3s), sampled music (of other artists' songs), AutoTune (basically removing the human singer from the song), etc. I feel like we've been marching toward this for nearly a hundred years now, replacing the human connection to the music with something artificial.
Kuyawa 3mo ago
Why demonetize? What if people wants to pay for AI music? What about the long tail? There is a market for everything, just label it and let it be.
- javier123454321 3mo ago
  I appreciate a platform for art to at least attempt at maintaining the semblance of it being for humans. If AI 'artists' disagree, they can boycott Tidal and not post their songs there. For me that is a feature that I actually really value, because AI slop making Spotify money has materially worsened my experience in that platform.
- iamsaitam 3mo ago
  Then support your favorite AI music creators by going to their gigs.. oh wait
  - PierceJoy 3mo ago
    Sure, if you're referring to people who actually play instruments or sing. Electronic music shows are mostly DJing though.
- elicash 3mo ago
  If there's a market, then a competitor app with different policies will likely arise. The other aspect that's missing from the discussion here is LEGAL. If Tidal is making money from stolen music -- although arguably they still are by offering it on a subscription basis -- then that opens them up to litigation. From that perspective, this may double both as risk-mitigation and also a marketing opportunity for them, would love an attorney to weigh in there. (From the comments here, Spotify is the market leader and already pays out for AI generated music. But I can't say that independently.)
cush 3mo ago
This is so surprising coming from Tidal - their entire business was built on high-fidelity, crediting artists, and paying them more
- recursive 3mo ago
  It seems consistent to me. I'm not sure if suno represents the state of the art, but the output I've heard from there seems to be noticeably lower fidelity than a skilled amateur recording. In many cases, it's still more than good enough. But Tidal advertises things like "lossless", which is a much higher fidelity threshold than anything suno can produce, at least that I've heard. Crediting artists might be taken to mean crediting human artists whose creative output is represented by the music. Sending royalties to "AI musicians" displaces some of those potential payments.
  - cush 3mo ago
    I suppose. To me, Tidal was always on the side of artists rather than big faceless studios. Now there's an even bigger, even more faceless entity - and it's surprising to me that Tidal is giving them a platform rather than blocking it entirely
iainctduncan 3mo ago
Some of this is sensible. The copyright authority (can't recall right this moment what it is called in the US) has said only works by human beings are copyrightable. A good argument is that therefore there is no reason to pay royalties on AI generated work as it is the equivalent to public domain. 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.
- mtrovo 3mo ago
  > A good argument is that therefore there is no reason to pay royalties on AI generated work as it is the equivalent to public domain. That has some different second order consequences that I don't think you're seeing. It's not that they will be free to you as a user, it's more that they will be free from the platform perspective to do whatever they want with the revenue they get from it. Say for example you have a platform with Spotify monetization scheme for instance, which is already very unfair to small artists. But now imagine you have to compete to be included on auto play or playlists against something that's basically free for Spotify, what's your chance of getting any money out of it? Say Spotify changes their algorithm and starts pushing 20% of all auto play playlists to consist of AI songs, that's basically a 20% bump on their profit basis.
habosa 3mo ago
Makes sense for them as a business, but still a bummer to have AI music mixed in with human music at all. To me there is literally no point to AI music. Music is communication. The artist is communicating with the listener through a pretty unique and magical asynchronous medium. AI (as we know it today) can't meet that bar and so it does not meet my definition of music.
- vibcdingenjoyer 3mo ago
  The whole “what is art” question has different answers for different people. Yes, for some, music is communication, but when I listen to metal in the gym it’s an adrenaline boost. When I listen to brain.fm, it’s for focus. When I listen to a rap song with an MC that’s great at storytelling, then it’s communication. Sometimes it’s just a utility though. I’ve played music for about 30 years - live, in bands, in my bedroom - played many instruments, written electronic music, made lots of noises. But I’m not always trying to communicate something. In fact I’m sometimes scared I don’t have anything good to say with my music. So I just play it.
- cseleborg 3mo ago
  I agree in sentiment, I love knowing that another human made this, either because I fancy I could maybe do something as good as that, or because I just admire the talent, or simply because the lyrics or music touch me somehow. That said, there are a lot of people who simply enjoy having something playing in the background, it doesn't matter what, and if you're into country music it's great to have 10,000+ hours of country music to play. If Tidal provides a checkbox so you can choose whether to exclude AI content, I think that would work for both audiences.
dkhenry 3mo ago
I just want Tidal and Spotify to give me the option to fully opt-out of AI generated music. I don't want it mixed in with my music. If others want it great, but I want the option to not engage with the content.
- ktbwrestler 3mo ago
  I feel the same way, but it’s hard to draw the line: - was the song totally one-shot “make me a song in the style of X?” - was it a legit artist that used AI to create a verse lyric stanza after they’d already created the entirety of the melody/ chords etc?
  - dkhenry 3mo ago
    I would go with, if the song could be reasonably performed live by the human publishing it, and have a similar sound to the recording, then its fine to keep in. The issue I have is songs like this one, where there is no way anyone could even try to perform it https://open.spotify.com/track/0jGJtiDfEO9syfSL8AshBF?si=b92a9e44e9224091 https://open.spotify.com/track/0jGJtiDfEO9syfSL8AshBF?si=b92...
    - JauntyHatAngle 3mo ago
      That doesn't really work for electronic music though. Electronic or not, whether messing with a buchla or producing via vsts and changing knobs around still ends up with a human feel and human choices in a way AI music doesn't. And what about the line between triggers or samples? I can play some impossible AI music if I sample the impossible parts and just say it's a sample played on a synth or whatever.
      - dkhenry 3mo ago
        It would be a shades of gray situation, but I think of this performance by Skrillex where he is mixing live, and thats what I would expect from a live EDM performance. There should be a line between a EDM artist, and a DJ https://youtu.be/hb0XLX0b4Y4 https://youtu.be/hb0XLX0b4Y4
Grombobulous 3mo ago
The policy seems a lot more reasonable than the straight up dystopian scam that Spotify runs, but I am surprised that there isn’t any streaming service that’s marketing heavy on “no AI allowed” considering the percentage of people who are against AI. Seems like small players like Tidal could make some headway with marketing like that.
yellowapple 3mo ago
Just got the email announcement this morning: > 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?
poppafuze 3mo ago
Tidal has declared that AI music will now be more profitable to them .
jordand 3mo ago
I've been a Tidal subscriber for several years, and while I've not seen much of the AI music problem (yet), there's been a big issue with people getting their music intentionally or unintentionally labelled under other artists names. The platform has had some odd technical hiccups too over the past year, so I've started wondering how many people are left actually maintaining it all (there were layoffs pretty recently).
- bogwog 3mo ago
  Same here, and I've run into annoying technical issues too. I am on the verge of canceling, but this new AI-skeptical stance makes me want to give them another chance. Sometimes I like to listen to their stations instead of my own playlists, but if you leave them on long enough they will eventually start playing obvious AI slop. If they actually figure out how to let me filter out ALL AI generated music, then I will be a happy customer even when their app throws meaningless error codes at me instead of playing music.
ReptileMan 3mo ago
The main thing that I learned from this is that Tidal is still alive. Anyway the battle with slop is curation. Eurodance by AI is as shitty as eurodance by humans.
6thbit 3mo ago
Isn’t it subjective what “substantially” may mean to them. If you use ai tools not for full generation of a song but perhaps a bass track would they allow monetizing?
summarybot 3mo ago
Headline should read "Tidal will not pay royalties to AI music"
jrm4 3mo ago
An interesting problem in the background of this is the cope. 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...)
PierceJoy 3mo ago
I have serious doubts that their detection will be good enough, especially in cases where it's not 100% AI generated. The EDM and hip hop genres relies heavily on samples, and I guarantee all the sample services all being pumped full of AI generated creations. Many artists using the sample won't even know they using things that are AI generated.
arjie 3mo ago
Cool stuff. I love AI music. Listen to it all day while writing code or whatever. Most of the time it’s the outrun or vaporwave like 1 hr playlists on YouTube and then I have a few Suno songs I’m fond of when I feel a specific mood strike me. It’s pretty cool technology. You just ask for a certain feeling to be evoked and you can have it done. Magical.
- pbronez 3mo ago
  Same, although I prefer Endel. It’s a paid subscription, but their objective-focused playlists work really well for me. Relax, Focus, Deep Focus… very effective.
annagio_ 3mo ago
lets see who is going to win, AI or Artists? I'm going to stick with real artists, even if some of them use ghost producers.
romanovcode 3mo ago
> Tidal will accept AI-generated music. Okey, that's all I needed to know. They could just put this one sentence in the doc and be done with it.
maxdo 3mo ago
I do have a music recommendation from a live person. After check was not a real person, it was quite a popular ai artist doing funk music. 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?
- fckgw 3mo ago
  > artist behind AI is making money. Real work, real people are happy. I would not call someone typing words into a prompt an "artist" doing "real work", and they definitely should not be monetizing it.
  - maxdo 3mo ago
    why person typing prompt to coding agent called developer vs music artist can't be treated as a professional ?
    - jplusequalt 3mo ago
      >why person typing prompt to coding agent called developer Speak for yourself.
disposition2 3mo ago
I commend Tidal for at least trying. 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.
waffletower 3mo ago
Given that Tidal will likely, and ironically, utilize AI to determine what music is considered AI, the decision to block monetization of AI categorized music is likely also unfair to artists who use spectral DSP and/or sample from AI generated sources though largely compose music in a manner similar to other common computer mediated music studio workflows. Such music may very well land in the realm of false positives. This is another step by streaming platforms which funnels and restricts musical creativity.
totallygeeky 3mo ago
I do think this is a (late to the party but) good policy overall from them. Monetization is biggest incentive, and then requiring labelling will be good for consumers making informed decisions on what they're listening to. I have my various beefs with them personally, but I am glad to see them approaching this in a fairly responsible way.
nunez 3mo ago
> Starting today, AI-generated music will not be monetizable. HECK YES, TIDAL!!!!!! This is exactly the right move. I only read the first half of this policy, and I absolutely love it. I hope Apple Music follows suit. (I don't trust Spotify to do so.)
bob1029 3mo ago
This is so vague in practice. The only thing I can see working out is banning creators who are so obvious with their use of AI that they directly forward watermarked content to the platform and we can establish cryptographic guarantees that the content was generated entirely on a GPU farm. Everything in-between seems to me to be extremely fair game for the problem of music production. We can hold our nuanced debates about what constitutes "AI generated" while listening to some minimal EDM tracks to remind ourselves how fine a line we must walk.
ggm 3mo ago
Not hard to imagine some kind of legal risk in this, but it would be great foundational case law for music/IPR. (tidal subscriber)
Alien1Being 3mo ago
AI generated articles, books, software and code are going to be the next targets. Why pay for AI slop when there is no copyright. Many of the articles posted to HN are now AI slop. The posters should realise that they have no copyright to it.
goobatrooba 3mo ago
The world is getting more confusing. My wife is 500+ episodes deep in Spotify's AI podcasts and doesn't believe me when I tell her these are neither human voices nor human texts. I can tell by a hundred small tells, but somehow she can't or doesn't want to. I'm sure in five years I will not be able to tell the difference either. So it becomes profitable to just pump out slop, give it hundreds of variations, and hope some of them rack up >1000 listens to pay out under Spotify's model, which just rewards quantity. I can't see how tidal can enforce it's quality policy. Who will review and apply it? And even those that pass will be cheap and plentiful to produce. On the other hand I guess they have told themselves that if people can't tell the difference then it doesn't matter - better to be on the bandwagon and unhappy than to be run over by the wagon all others are on. Just basic game theory - everyone blinks and everyone is worse off. But I'm convinced wthout a change in approach by the main providers, basically audio entertainment and the podcaster and independent musician models (unless they can live off concerts) are dead.

308 points by hn8726 3mo ago

That's fair, allow AI slop but tag obvious AI slop as such. Hopefully they add an option to hide detected AI slop, something I wish Youtube had for instance.

DerArzt 3mo ago
Also they aren't paying out for AI generated content.

cnobody 3mo ago

Funny, Tidal want pay royalties on it.

mc32 3mo ago

I like what I see from their policy. They accept that it’s part of the industry landscape and also say it’s not monetizeable. They will likely revisit and revise their stance as things change. I strongly agree on labeling the generated content.

pier25 3mo ago

Good now add a setting to hide all AI content.

dainiusse 3mo ago
It will be super premium pro plan:)
- DrewADesign 3mo ago
  Maybe on a less expensive super premium plus plan, you only see ai-generated content, but it’s at the highest quality streaming tier.

jorisw 3mo ago

Allow AI, but require labeling as such, and demonetize. Would love for YouTube to follow suit on this

spaqin 3mo ago
Would you really like to take action and earn less money? Morality is dead...
- jdiff 3mo ago
  What connection to morality is there from taking action and earning less money? I can think of many morally positive situations that would match this odd vague phrasing you're presenting.
  - bigfishrunning 3mo ago
    I think the parent poster is saying that if there's a "this is AI, don't give me any money" checkbox, most people will lie and not check it, because they do not have the amount of morality it takes to accept demonetization.
    - jorisw 3mo ago
      I think they’re talking about YouTube not wanting to miss revenue by taking similar measures

riddley 3mo ago

Interestingly, this is a 404 if you're logged into Tidal.

_flux 3mo ago
Works for me (TM). Maybe you lost CDN-lottery?
- stusmall 3mo ago
  I had the same issue when logged in. I opened a private tab and it worked.
jordemort 3mo ago
Works for me, they also emailed it to me this morning

fxwin 3mo ago

> Tidal will accept AI-generated music. > 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.

VladVladikoff 3mo ago
The flood of AI music on their platform is becuase people can make money off it. If you turn off that faucet you stop the flooding.
- sarjann 3mo ago
  I think this is also a reason why X has gotten worse. They pay people for engagement.
  - stronglikedan 3mo ago
    [flagged]
    - selectodude 3mo ago
      You get both the white nationalist and the antisemite sides, yes.
      - vlian2088 3mo ago
        as opposed to ye olde twitter where only wholesome racism was allowed https://web.archive.org/web/20181130015402/https://pasteboard.co/HzdB4wI.png https://web.archive.org/web/20181130015402/https://pasteboar... https://web.archive.org/web/20180827011518/https://pasteboard.co/HzdBkuf.png https://web.archive.org/web/20180827011518/https://pasteboar... https://web.archive.org/web/20180827011519/https://pasteboard.co/HzdBAUN.png https://web.archive.org/web/20180827011519/https://pasteboar...

jeremyberemy 3mo ago

Am I the only one getting a "Page not found"? Edit: Nevermind, see riddley's comment. That's what I get for being logged in, I guess?

akshaydeshraj 3mo ago

A very reasonable policy, prevents AI Slop from flooding the platform due to misaligned creator / consumer incentives

sph 3mo ago

> Tidal will accept AI-generated music Tl;dr. Another one bites the dust.

pier25 3mo ago
it won't be monetized so there's zero incentive to upload AI slop to Tidal
- suyash 3mo ago
  They say only wholly produced music using AI can't be monetized, nothing stopping it's 95% AI and 5% Human. Also no concerete definitions of what that even means.
  - Imustaskforhelp 3mo ago
    I think that they mentioned both wholly produced music or substantially produced music. I think that it will be a fuzzy line but for example in the case of 95% AI and 5% human probably won't work.
- have_faith 3mo ago
  Why would someone doing that voluntarily tag their content as AI? they can make money by hiding it.
- wakamoleguy 3mo ago
  There is only zero incentive if the filter detects AI music reliably. It's still a race between effective detection and cost to generate content, isn't it?
  - pier25 3mo ago
    Suno et al don't really have a incentive to hide the fact that their tracks are generated using AI. Quite the contrary, the only way they won't get sued to death by UMG and the other big labels is to disclose AI generated tracks.

techpression 3mo ago

Love that they don't pay any royalties for AI music right now, unlike Spotify.

k__ 3mo ago
So, their incentive is to promote AI music, since they don't have to pay royalties for them.
- esafak 3mo ago
  How so? People want to avoid it.
  - et-al 3mo ago
    Listeners will likely want to avoid it. But "creators" pushing AI music won't tag their slop as such because they want to monetize (surprise, they're not doing it for the love of the game). So this hinges on Tidal being able to reliably identify AI-generated music.
  - brk 3mo ago
    True, though it seems like at least 75% of the traffic on various social media and streaming sites is content that people want to avoid, yet there it is.
  - elicash 3mo ago
    I don't agree with the overall point, but what they are saying is that if Tidal makes a "lofi hip hop mix beats" playlist, then they have to pay a nickel to an artist if they direct the user to their song, but NOTHING if they direct to someone who uploaded an AI song. So that's an extra nickel of profit for pointing to the AI song. In reality, I don't think this is how it'll shake out. But it's a valid argument.

elicash 3mo ago

> Tidal defines AI-generated music as music that is wholly or substantially generated by generative artificial intelligence. 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.

mvdtnz 3mo ago
They actually don't need to spell it out more. They can use discretion. This avoids hair-splitting from pedants like you because discretion is discretion and there's no argument.
jimmypk 3mo ago
[flagged]
asah 3mo ago
+1 - and what about an entirely AI generated song with a human who adds a 0.1 sec hum. Or even this hum is copypasted from another human generated song.

gwbas1c 3mo ago

I'm a Tidal subscriber, something like this is needed. 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.

esafak 3mo ago
Spotify is the same. This impersonation ought to be illegal.
- gwbas1c 3mo ago
  I'm pretty sure it is. Effective enforcement is a different matter.
- somehnguy 3mo ago
  Do you have some impersonated artist names I would be able to look up? This isn't a thing I have (knowingly) run into on Spotify yet and I'm really curious to see more
  - yellowapple 3mo ago
    Yes (as in the band Yes) on Tidal at one point had a bunch of probably-AI-generated albums that Tidal shoved into Yes' discography because the “artist” included “Yes” in the name (with album titles like “Yes, it's raining” and other such nonsense). Thankfully it seems Tidal's cleaned those out.
  - gwbas1c 3mo ago
    "Yes" and "BT". I've also some across some AI-generated slop under the name "Rush". There's someone releasing a new track almost every day as "BT" that is clearly not "BT". I didn't see the naming issue that the other reply had with "Yes", but I do frequently see their name pop up with slop.
- consensus1 3mo ago

Invictus0 3mo ago

How are they going to detect the AI music?

brk 3mo ago
RFC 3514 is being repurposed as an "AI Bit", all AI-generated content will be required to set this bit during transfers.
- swingboy 3mo ago
  How is this enforceable?
  - jdiff 3mo ago
    That's the joke of RFC 3514. Setting the evil bit of a packet to 0 means it is harmless and no defensive action should be taken. Secure systems should defend against packets with the evil bit set to 1. Insecure systems may choose to crash, be penetrated, etc.
- rvz 3mo ago
  I cannot wait. Just in time for next year. Coming soon in 276 days from now.
crtasm 3mo ago
Maybe licensing existing tech, e.g. https://newsroom-deezer.com/2026/01/ai-generated-music-deezer-selling-detection-tool/ https://newsroom-deezer.com/2026/01/ai-generated-music-deeze...

dude250711 3mo ago

A tide of slop.

keiferski 3mo ago

I really hope someone makes a music platform in the future that is verified as human-made. Music is about connecting to human emotions, not poor facsimiles of it. 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.

techterrier 3mo ago
this is called the pub
1123581321 3mo ago
That would be interesting and could start simply. CDBaby was what, $20 per record and self-serve. Maybe each record on this new platform costs $200 and is accompanied by an employee-uploaded video of the artist uploading the record.
wiremine 3mo ago
> Music is about connecting to human emotions, not poor facsimiles of it "art is in the eye of the beholder." I listen to a lot of EDM, which can be very mechanical, but I personally have strong emotional connection to. I personally would welcome AI-generated music as an alternative to human-made. To be clear: I do agree a "human-verified" system would be great, but I don't think it would be black and white. And I would guess that eventually AI music will be better than a lot of human made music.
- keiferski 3mo ago
  You will probably be able to listen to machine-generated music on most major platforms. I just hope there’s one which excludes all of that. Personally I think it’s a bit like cultural junk food: it has the appearance of real food, but leaves one hungry afterward. Which really isn’t all that surprising – music isn’t just some random collection of patterns, it’s intimately tied to real culture. Current AI software is only ever going to copy and regurgitate human culture, not make meaningful creations from scratch.

preetham_rangu 3mo ago

The detection problem is genuinely hard. Even desktop AI agents I've been working with recently can control Spotify, fill forms, navigate apps — all indistinguishable from human interaction at the OS level. If that's hard to detect at the application layer, detecting AI-generated music at the audio layer seems like a cat and mouse game that Tidal will struggle to win without self-reporting from uploaders.

butlike 3mo ago
I feel like audio-level heuristics will be easier, but ultimately who's to say? > Generative models synthesize sound mathematically. These synthesis methods leave unnatural dips, specific spectral noise profiles, or phase alignments that rarely occur in real, human-recorded audio
- marmarama 3mo ago
  Then the slop merchants will simply move to controlling a DAW with AI and use the same software synths that everyone else does. It's a little more involved and slower, but far from hard. Ultimately this isn't really solvable without a way of marking audio with a verifiable signature that it was produced by a specific human, with some kind of reputation algorithm.
- waffletower 3mo ago
  This is a totally fascist musical bias -- I have been using spectral techniques in music since the late 1980s. It has been common for decades. "Unnatural" spectral packet distortion is a component of a wide-breadth of existing music that pre-dates modern generative AI. I am confident that the false positives will be overwhelming and unfair to many artists. Such a cowardly and lossy solution.
Nifty3929 3mo ago
You are correct, but I think having a good policy - and trying earnestly to enforce it - is a good start, even if that enforcement is very imperfect.
cseleborg 3mo ago

butlike 3mo ago

> Starting today, AI-generated music will not be monetizable. 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?

purerandomness 3mo ago
That's the neat part: AI Slop "music" will have to stop pretending that it has any value.
- butlike 3mo ago
  I think my comment is being misunderstood. I don't think AI music has any value. I'm just calling out that Tidal's right and left hands are saying two different things. The left hand: AI music has no monetary value. The right hand: AI music is valuable enough to host on the platform. This is the schism that doesn't make sense to me.

postalcoder 3mo ago

AI music has taken over small businesses like coffee shops and restaurants. AI music drives me nuts because, to me, it still is very much deep in an uncanny valley. That said, I can't blame the businesses because they are all (dis)incentive driven. 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.

Grombobulous 3mo ago
This is all about streaming platforms commandeering royalties away from artists. The way royalties get assigned is based on a percentage of your listening versus your monthly payment. For example, spend an entire month listening to Taylor Swift’s new album, she gets the entire royalty share. But if you listen to the album 100 times but then listen to lofi beats 900 times, Taylor only gets 10%. The “earnings per stream” number you’ll see cited is only an average and varies greatly because there’s only so much money to go around since your listening is unlimited. But now you have services like Spotify that are removing real songs from “mood” playlists and replacing them with AI music that directs royalties toward Spotify. Another factor that has happened: record labels have been working to screw over artists so much that they actually negotiated lower royalty rates with Spotify in exchange for company stock. Giving up royalties but then instead owning a part of Spotify effectively directs money away artists and toward the labels.
- AlexandrB 3mo ago
  > For example, spend an entire month listening to Taylor Swift’s new album, she gets the entire royalty share. > But if you listen to the album 100 times but then listen to lofi beats 900 times, Taylor only gets 10%. Hahaha, I wish this was how it worked, but it's not. At all. Suppose I spend all month listening only to Fugazi. Now some miniscule tiny fraction of my (and everyone else's) monthly payment will go to Fugazi. The biggest portion of my monthly payment will go to Taylor Swift because she got the most plays on the platform. This means it actually matters very little what I listen to because I listen to only a few hours of music a week. A coffee shop running Spotify will generate 16+ hours of listening per day and this will determine who gets my subscription money far more than my actions will. What you're describing would be like heaven for independent artists compared to the status quo. Having said that, you're right that AI music is partially about funnelling more money to the streaming platform. Even before AI generated music, Spotify was cutting deals with "chill vibes" artists where they would receive a smaller payment per play than a "normal" artist[1]. Mysteriously those artists ended up getting placed on "chill vibes" playlists more often than you would expect. Funny how that works. I expect the same chicanery is happening with AI. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversy_over_fake_artists_on_Spotify https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversy_over_fake_artists_...

hmokiguess 3mo ago

I wonder if we are gonna see an emerging market where musicians are hired to provide support for AI music farms, I feel like gig musicians can easily cover/learn to play anything without much trouble 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

cseleborg 3mo ago
That's a genuinely grim thought, but not unrealistic either. I'll have to chew on that one, it's interesting.

TrackerFF 3mo ago

I'm a musician by hobby, but used to make a living of it in my younger days. AI music has come to stay, can't do anything about it - the cat is out of the bag. 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.

javier123454321 3mo ago
I have a great solution. They can point chatGPT to their AI generated slop and get AI generated enjoyment from others appreciating their "Art". Meanwhile, keep that out of my sphere.
threetonesun 3mo ago
Honestly I don't know that I care about AI generated tracks, like you said it's the same argument one could make for samples or drum machines or synths or a dozen other previous technologies in the music space. What I actually miss is music curation and discovery, instead of a just a giant slop-pile of new music that I can't possible sort through, or an algorithm defines for me. I'd love some Internet Pirate Radio. If someone wants to sort through the best all-AI tracks and run those, that'd be cool. I don't want an AI to pick the best AI tracks.

tiahura 3mo ago

Interesting discussion with Jeff Bridges on Suno: https://x.com/adityarao310/status/2071488913630204209/video/1 https://x.com/adityarao310/status/2071488913630204209/video/...

jimt1234 3mo ago
I think the question Theo asks is the most relevant: Do you think [an AI-generated song] holds as much value? And I think we've been asking this question for years now, in different contexts: recorded music (records), copyable music (dual cassette recorders, CD-burners, mp3s), sampled music (of other artists' songs), AutoTune (basically removing the human singer from the song), etc. I feel like we've been marching toward this for nearly a hundred years now, replacing the human connection to the music with something artificial.

Kuyawa 3mo ago

Why demonetize? What if people wants to pay for AI music? What about the long tail? There is a market for everything, just label it and let it be.

javier123454321 3mo ago
I appreciate a platform for art to at least attempt at maintaining the semblance of it being for humans. If AI 'artists' disagree, they can boycott Tidal and not post their songs there. For me that is a feature that I actually really value, because AI slop making Spotify money has materially worsened my experience in that platform.
iamsaitam 3mo ago
Then support your favorite AI music creators by going to their gigs.. oh wait
- PierceJoy 3mo ago
  Sure, if you're referring to people who actually play instruments or sing. Electronic music shows are mostly DJing though.
elicash 3mo ago
If there's a market, then a competitor app with different policies will likely arise. The other aspect that's missing from the discussion here is LEGAL. If Tidal is making money from stolen music -- although arguably they still are by offering it on a subscription basis -- then that opens them up to litigation. From that perspective, this may double both as risk-mitigation and also a marketing opportunity for them, would love an attorney to weigh in there. (From the comments here, Spotify is the market leader and already pays out for AI generated music. But I can't say that independently.)

cush 3mo ago

This is so surprising coming from Tidal - their entire business was built on high-fidelity, crediting artists, and paying them more

recursive 3mo ago
It seems consistent to me. I'm not sure if suno represents the state of the art, but the output I've heard from there seems to be noticeably lower fidelity than a skilled amateur recording. In many cases, it's still more than good enough. But Tidal advertises things like "lossless", which is a much higher fidelity threshold than anything suno can produce, at least that I've heard. Crediting artists might be taken to mean crediting human artists whose creative output is represented by the music. Sending royalties to "AI musicians" displaces some of those potential payments.
- cush 3mo ago
  I suppose. To me, Tidal was always on the side of artists rather than big faceless studios. Now there's an even bigger, even more faceless entity - and it's surprising to me that Tidal is giving them a platform rather than blocking it entirely

iainctduncan 3mo ago

Some of this is sensible. The copyright authority (can't recall right this moment what it is called in the US) has said only works by human beings are copyrightable. A good argument is that therefore there is no reason to pay royalties on AI generated work as it is the equivalent to public domain. 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.

mtrovo 3mo ago
> A good argument is that therefore there is no reason to pay royalties on AI generated work as it is the equivalent to public domain. That has some different second order consequences that I don't think you're seeing. It's not that they will be free to you as a user, it's more that they will be free from the platform perspective to do whatever they want with the revenue they get from it. Say for example you have a platform with Spotify monetization scheme for instance, which is already very unfair to small artists. But now imagine you have to compete to be included on auto play or playlists against something that's basically free for Spotify, what's your chance of getting any money out of it? Say Spotify changes their algorithm and starts pushing 20% of all auto play playlists to consist of AI songs, that's basically a 20% bump on their profit basis.

habosa 3mo ago

Makes sense for them as a business, but still a bummer to have AI music mixed in with human music at all. To me there is literally no point to AI music. Music is communication. The artist is communicating with the listener through a pretty unique and magical asynchronous medium. AI (as we know it today) can't meet that bar and so it does not meet my definition of music.

vibcdingenjoyer 3mo ago
The whole “what is art” question has different answers for different people. Yes, for some, music is communication, but when I listen to metal in the gym it’s an adrenaline boost. When I listen to brain.fm, it’s for focus. When I listen to a rap song with an MC that’s great at storytelling, then it’s communication. Sometimes it’s just a utility though. I’ve played music for about 30 years - live, in bands, in my bedroom - played many instruments, written electronic music, made lots of noises. But I’m not always trying to communicate something. In fact I’m sometimes scared I don’t have anything good to say with my music. So I just play it.
cseleborg 3mo ago
I agree in sentiment, I love knowing that another human made this, either because I fancy I could maybe do something as good as that, or because I just admire the talent, or simply because the lyrics or music touch me somehow. That said, there are a lot of people who simply enjoy having something playing in the background, it doesn't matter what, and if you're into country music it's great to have 10,000+ hours of country music to play. If Tidal provides a checkbox so you can choose whether to exclude AI content, I think that would work for both audiences.

dkhenry 3mo ago

I just want Tidal and Spotify to give me the option to fully opt-out of AI generated music. I don't want it mixed in with my music. If others want it great, but I want the option to not engage with the content.

ktbwrestler 3mo ago
I feel the same way, but it’s hard to draw the line: - was the song totally one-shot “make me a song in the style of X?” - was it a legit artist that used AI to create a verse lyric stanza after they’d already created the entirety of the melody/ chords etc?
- dkhenry 3mo ago
  I would go with, if the song could be reasonably performed live by the human publishing it, and have a similar sound to the recording, then its fine to keep in. The issue I have is songs like this one, where there is no way anyone could even try to perform it https://open.spotify.com/track/0jGJtiDfEO9syfSL8AshBF?si=b92a9e44e9224091 https://open.spotify.com/track/0jGJtiDfEO9syfSL8AshBF?si=b92...
  - JauntyHatAngle 3mo ago
    That doesn't really work for electronic music though. Electronic or not, whether messing with a buchla or producing via vsts and changing knobs around still ends up with a human feel and human choices in a way AI music doesn't. And what about the line between triggers or samples? I can play some impossible AI music if I sample the impossible parts and just say it's a sample played on a synth or whatever.
    - dkhenry 3mo ago
      It would be a shades of gray situation, but I think of this performance by Skrillex where he is mixing live, and thats what I would expect from a live EDM performance. There should be a line between a EDM artist, and a DJ https://youtu.be/hb0XLX0b4Y4 https://youtu.be/hb0XLX0b4Y4

Grombobulous 3mo ago

The policy seems a lot more reasonable than the straight up dystopian scam that Spotify runs, but I am surprised that there isn’t any streaming service that’s marketing heavy on “no AI allowed” considering the percentage of people who are against AI. Seems like small players like Tidal could make some headway with marketing like that.

yellowapple 3mo ago

Just got the email announcement this morning: > 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?

poppafuze 3mo ago

Tidal has declared that AI music will now be more profitable to them .

jordand 3mo ago

I've been a Tidal subscriber for several years, and while I've not seen much of the AI music problem (yet), there's been a big issue with people getting their music intentionally or unintentionally labelled under other artists names. The platform has had some odd technical hiccups too over the past year, so I've started wondering how many people are left actually maintaining it all (there were layoffs pretty recently).

bogwog 3mo ago
Same here, and I've run into annoying technical issues too. I am on the verge of canceling, but this new AI-skeptical stance makes me want to give them another chance. Sometimes I like to listen to their stations instead of my own playlists, but if you leave them on long enough they will eventually start playing obvious AI slop. If they actually figure out how to let me filter out ALL AI generated music, then I will be a happy customer even when their app throws meaningless error codes at me instead of playing music.

ReptileMan 3mo ago

The main thing that I learned from this is that Tidal is still alive. Anyway the battle with slop is curation. Eurodance by AI is as shitty as eurodance by humans.

6thbit 3mo ago

Isn’t it subjective what “substantially” may mean to them. If you use ai tools not for full generation of a song but perhaps a bass track would they allow monetizing?

summarybot 3mo ago

Headline should read "Tidal will not pay royalties to AI music"

jrm4 3mo ago

An interesting problem in the background of this is the cope. 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...)

PierceJoy 3mo ago

I have serious doubts that their detection will be good enough, especially in cases where it's not 100% AI generated. The EDM and hip hop genres relies heavily on samples, and I guarantee all the sample services all being pumped full of AI generated creations. Many artists using the sample won't even know they using things that are AI generated.

arjie 3mo ago

Cool stuff. I love AI music. Listen to it all day while writing code or whatever. Most of the time it’s the outrun or vaporwave like 1 hr playlists on YouTube and then I have a few Suno songs I’m fond of when I feel a specific mood strike me. It’s pretty cool technology. You just ask for a certain feeling to be evoked and you can have it done. Magical.

pbronez 3mo ago
Same, although I prefer Endel. It’s a paid subscription, but their objective-focused playlists work really well for me. Relax, Focus, Deep Focus… very effective.

annagio_ 3mo ago

lets see who is going to win, AI or Artists? I'm going to stick with real artists, even if some of them use ghost producers.

romanovcode 3mo ago

> Tidal will accept AI-generated music. Okey, that's all I needed to know. They could just put this one sentence in the doc and be done with it.

maxdo 3mo ago

I do have a music recommendation from a live person. After check was not a real person, it was quite a popular ai artist doing funk music. 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?

fckgw 3mo ago
> artist behind AI is making money. Real work, real people are happy. I would not call someone typing words into a prompt an "artist" doing "real work", and they definitely should not be monetizing it.
- maxdo 3mo ago
  why person typing prompt to coding agent called developer vs music artist can't be treated as a professional ?
  - jplusequalt 3mo ago
    >why person typing prompt to coding agent called developer Speak for yourself.

disposition2 3mo ago

I commend Tidal for at least trying. 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.

waffletower 3mo ago

Given that Tidal will likely, and ironically, utilize AI to determine what music is considered AI, the decision to block monetization of AI categorized music is likely also unfair to artists who use spectral DSP and/or sample from AI generated sources though largely compose music in a manner similar to other common computer mediated music studio workflows. Such music may very well land in the realm of false positives. This is another step by streaming platforms which funnels and restricts musical creativity.

totallygeeky 3mo ago

I do think this is a (late to the party but) good policy overall from them. Monetization is biggest incentive, and then requiring labelling will be good for consumers making informed decisions on what they're listening to. I have my various beefs with them personally, but I am glad to see them approaching this in a fairly responsible way.

nunez 3mo ago

> Starting today, AI-generated music will not be monetizable. HECK YES, TIDAL!!!!!! This is exactly the right move. I only read the first half of this policy, and I absolutely love it. I hope Apple Music follows suit. (I don't trust Spotify to do so.)

bob1029 3mo ago

This is so vague in practice. The only thing I can see working out is banning creators who are so obvious with their use of AI that they directly forward watermarked content to the platform and we can establish cryptographic guarantees that the content was generated entirely on a GPU farm. Everything in-between seems to me to be extremely fair game for the problem of music production. We can hold our nuanced debates about what constitutes "AI generated" while listening to some minimal EDM tracks to remind ourselves how fine a line we must walk.

ggm 3mo ago

Not hard to imagine some kind of legal risk in this, but it would be great foundational case law for music/IPR. (tidal subscriber)

Alien1Being 3mo ago

AI generated articles, books, software and code are going to be the next targets. Why pay for AI slop when there is no copyright. Many of the articles posted to HN are now AI slop. The posters should realise that they have no copyright to it.

goobatrooba 3mo ago

The world is getting more confusing. My wife is 500+ episodes deep in Spotify's AI podcasts and doesn't believe me when I tell her these are neither human voices nor human texts. I can tell by a hundred small tells, but somehow she can't or doesn't want to. I'm sure in five years I will not be able to tell the difference either. So it becomes profitable to just pump out slop, give it hundreds of variations, and hope some of them rack up >1000 listens to pay out under Spotify's model, which just rewards quantity. I can't see how tidal can enforce it's quality policy. Who will review and apply it? And even those that pass will be cheap and plentiful to produce. On the other hand I guess they have told themselves that if people can't tell the difference then it doesn't matter - better to be on the bandwagon and unhappy than to be run over by the wagon all others are on. Just basic game theory - everyone blinks and everyone is worse off. But I'm convinced wthout a change in approach by the main providers, basically audio entertainment and the podcaster and independent musician models (unless they can live off concerts) are dead.