The stats are shocking: Deezer claims that 60,000 fully AI generated songs are uploaded to its service daily. Given that most music is distributed at once to all platforms, experts say that Spotify’s daily count — of the more than 100,000 songs estimated to be uploaded daily overall — shouldn’t be too far off.
The rapid acceleration of AI song uploads might sound like a problem for streaming services, which are facing issues with user experience and search confusion amid the flood of content. But does Spotify, by far the most influential player in the market, view it that way?
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In the company’s latest earnings call last Tuesday (Feb. 10), co-CEO Gustav Söderström said, basically, no. “A growing catalog has always been very good for us,” he said in reference to the rise of original AI-generated songs. “It attracts new users, drives engagement and builds fandoms … while the music may be generated on various AI platforms, the point is that regardless of where the music is made, the cultural moment always happens on Spotify.”
Some AI songs have already proven to be popular listening options on Spotify, as evidenced by the number of AI songs that have climbed its charts. If Spotify were to limit the growth of its catalog, barring or penalizing certain AI-generated content, it’s likely that Spotify would open itself up to competition from a more lax streaming platform. With that in mind, it’s not surprising that Spotify has yet to make AI-specific regulations on its platform, instead adopting an approach that generally penalizes any case of impersonation, mass uploads and artificial streaming — problems that often are associated with (but not limited to) AI music.
Today, the public debate over whether AI music belongs on streaming services — and if the AI music companies facilitating the creation of all that music should do more to stop the surge — has hit a fever pitch, dividing stakeholders even within the same sector of the music business. AI music companies, like Udio and Suno, are divided in their take on this situation — as are majors like Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group and listening platforms like Spotify and Bandcamp.
The debate is also at issue in Universal Music Group’s settlement talks in its lawsuit against Suno. In a recent interview on Billboard’s On the Record podcast, UMG chief digital officer and executive vp, Michael Nash, said that Suno’s disinterest in making its service into a so-called “walled garden,” where no songs can exit their own platform, is a reason why their part of the 2024 $500 million copyright infringement lawsuit is still ongoing. “That’s kind of a hat-hanger in this discussion,” he said.
Udio, which was also sued by the three majors in a near-identical 2024 lawsuit, agreed to a “walled garden” to reach a settlement with UMG — and as soon as it happened, angry Udio users took to Reddit, writing, “This feels like an absolute betrayal,” and, “This is the worst and most disgusting fraud.” (In response to the backlash, Udio opened up downloading for 48 hours to quell the upset customers and remain committed to upholding a “walled garden.”)
Just days after Nash’s interview aired, Suno’s chief music officer Paul Sinclair took to LinkedIn to write a lengthy post called “Open Studios, Not Walled Gardens,” weighing in with his point of view on the matter, writing, “At the center of today’s debate is control versus empowerment.
“There’s a growing narrative that the safest future for music is one where new creative tools live inside tightly controlled, ‘walled garden’ environments. The idea is that if music can’t leave the platform, can’t be downloaded, edited elsewhere, shared freely, or distributed more broadly, then rights are better protected,” he wrote, adding that he “understand[s] where that instinct comes from,” given his past experience at Warner Music Group and Atlantic Records.
But Sinclair believes that “if we had tried to lock music into closed systems over the last 25 years, we wouldn’t have streaming as we know it,” arguing that there are a number of exciting new genres and innovations in the music business that lie ahead, “but for that promise to be real, these tools can’t just be toys inside a box.”
Warner Music Group was able to find a way forward with Suno and finalized a deal with the AI music platform back in November that settled their part of the blockbuster lawsuit, created a new licensing regime and, notably, did not force Suno to adopt a “walled garden.” Instead, Suno users now have a limit on downloads and must pay more money to increase that limit. Following Nash and Sinclair’s remarks, WMG CEO Robert Kyncl was asked about the “walled garden” debate during Warner’s last earnings call on Feb. 5. He answered: “I think this issue is getting painted too much in black and white… Black and white is never the answer.”
Bandcamp believes there’s no such thing as an equilibrium — AI songs shouldn’t sit alongside human-made ones. The music platform recently posted an update on Reddit, telling users about a new policy that bans songs that use generative in all or a “substantial part” of their process. When asked for more information on how this system would work, Dan Melnick, general manager for Bandcamp, told Billboard he was not able to provide details “for security purposes” but assured that the systems “are under constant review for efficacy.”
These discussions all assume something big, however — that it is possible to stop users from finding a way to download and distribute AI music, no matter what walls are put up on the AI model or on a listening service. Musician and technologist Holly Herndon noted this in a thread on X, following news of Bandcamp’s new rules, saying that banning AI music is a “tourniquet” and impossible to enforce.
One solution to the inevitable leak of AI music on the internet comes from Nash’s On the Record interview: anti-dilution policies. Nash told Billboard that this policy was devised first to resolve UMG’s three-month standoff with TikTok in 2024. He revealed on the podcast that back in 2024, the real reason why UMG pulled its music from TikTok stemmed from TikTok’s proposal to use “AI content” created by users “to dilute the royalty pool for artists,” as he put it.
In the resolution of that deal, Nash asserts UMG ended up getting “the best protections that we had been able to obtain to that point,” adding that “they remain some of the best protections that we have in any agreement with the music service, in terms of AI protection and what we call anti-dilution, meaning our royalties won’t be diluted by pure AI content” — something that he also says he’s now successfully added to streaming service agreements since. A representative for WMG tells Billboard they are also working to add these same protections into its licensing deals as well.
As Kyncl said in WMG’s earnings call “it’s never easy,” to strike this balance between the interests of worried rights holders and tech optimists. “but it’s worth it to do the hard work of finding the equilibrium that creates value — we think we got it right.”