Human artists are already being squeezed by streaming economics, and the numbers are not abstract. A recent UK example showed a band receiving about 0.29p per stream from Spotify for millions of plays, even before label and distributor splits.  When the pool is that tight, anything that diverts attention, playlist space, or royalties away from real people has immediate consequences.

Now add the scale of AI uploads. Deezer says it is receiving over 50,000 fully AI-generated tracks per day, which it estimates at more than 34% of daily uploads.  This is not a niche category. It is a massive portion of the catalogue intake, and it affects discovery for everyone who is not producing at AI volumes.

The next problem is manipulation. Deezer has reported that up to 70 per cent of streams on fully AI-generated tracks on its service are fraudulent.  WIPO has also been clear that streaming fraud pulls money out of a finite royalty pool, which means legitimate rightsholders receive less.  The obvious incentive is to mass-produce content and then manufacture engagement until it looks legitimate.

This is also reaching mainstream visibility. Reporting in late 2025 covered an AI-generated country track associated with “Breaking Rust” reaching number one on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart.  The wider point is simple. If AI-generated content can chart and can be botted into apparent popularity, then relying on charts, playlists, and “momentum” as credibility signals become less reliable for listeners and for platforms alike.

Finally, there is the issue of incentives and opacity. Passive listening is dominated by playlists and algorithmic programming, and those systems are not independently auditable. Without mandatory labelling and transparent reporting, the public cannot verify how much AI-generated content is being placed into high-volume listening contexts, or whose interests that serves. Deezer has already shown one workable baseline by tagging fully AI-generated tracks and describing enforcement intended to limit their amplification.

The minimum standard across the industry should be clear disclosure, meaningful restrictions on algorithmic and editorial promotion for undisclosed AI content, and enforcement that makes botting and catalogue flooding unprofitable.

Either they all clearly flag AI music and give users a clear opt out or these platforms need to ban all AI-generated music because they represent a fundamental misuse of our subscription funds and harm real artists.