Music streaming service Tidal announced it won\u2019t pay royalties for AI-generated music in an email to users and an announcement on its website published Monday. \u201cTidal\u2019s priority is ensuring royalties go to original works directly produced, written, and performed by people,\u201d the announcement reads. \u201cWe will therefore not knowingly attribute royalties to music we identify as wholly AI-generated.\u201dLike much of the internet, music streaming services are awash in AI-generated slop. Spotify promised to fight AI spam with labeling and filtering but also embraced the broader trend of AI music. AI-generated bands like The Velvet Sundown and Breaking Rust have millions of listens on Spotify and make the service money. In May, Spotify announced a deal with Universal that would let fans create \u201ccovers and remixes of their favorite songs.\u201dSoon Spotify customers will be able to push a button and discover what Metallica would sound like if it were a reggae band.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tidal is trying something different. The streaming service isn\u2019t a giant in the field \u2014 Apple Music, YouTube, and Spotify dominate the charts \u2014 but it\u2019s built a reputation by collaborating with artists, giving them a bigger cut of the streaming profits, and focusing on delivering high quality versions of audio. Tidal is the streaming service for listeners obsessed with bit-rate and FLAC. It\u2019s for people who have $200 digital-to-analog converters next to their computer.The company said it won\u2019t pay for \u201cwholly\u201d AI-generated music but it also said it won\u2019t remove AI-tainted music from the platform entirely. Like Spotify before it, Tidal said it\u2019s going to work to identify the AI slop on its platform, label it, and hold AI-generated music to a \u201chigher standard of content integrity.\u201d Spotify said something similar last year, but there are still plenty of unlabeled AI-generated tracks on the platform.Tidal also said it won\u2019t remove AI-tainted music entirely. \u201cArtists should have the freedom to create with AI tools, and listeners should have the autonomy to choose the type of content they consume,\u201d it said. As of this writing, The Velvet Sundown and Breaking Rust are both live on Tidal. Breaking Rust\u2019s bio identified it as AI-generated country music, but The Velvet Sundown had no bio at all.\u201cTidal 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,\u201d the company said in an email to its users.It elaborated on its website. \u201cStarting today, AI-generated music will not be monetizable,\u201d it said. \u201cWe are only in the beginning of the era of AI-generated music. We acknowledge the ongoing debate regarding whether certain AI-generated music (e.g. AI-generated music developed from fairly and properly licensed models) should be entitled to earn royalties. This debate will continue as the technology advances and rightsholders and AI music platforms develop licensing models.\u201dIt\u2019s unclear if The Velvet Sundown and other bands like it will keep making money on Tidal. These bands are black boxes. Are they wholly AI-generated and therefore exempted from compensation from Tidal? Or are they human-directed enough that the streaming service will continue to compensate them. 404 Media reached out to Tidal to ask but did not hear back.On June 28, the day before Tidal\u2019s announcement, The Velvet Sundown released a cover of Dolly Parton\u2019s \u201cI Will Always Love You\u201d on Spotify and Tidal. It\u2019s atrocious and it\u2019s not labeled as AI-generated on either service.\u201cWe exist to confuse music journalists, comfort robots, and help Spotify executives sleep at night,\u201d says the frontpage of The Velvet Sundown\u2019s website. \u201cWe were basically built for it, engineered to fill playlists, avoid royalties, and haunt your Discover Weekly like a ghost with good taste. Is it art? Is it a loophole? Either way, it streams beautifully.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"