Music streaming service Tidal said on Monday that artists who upload music created in whole or in part with AI must label it as such – and those songs will not be eligible for royalties.
The service’s new AI policy goes into effect on July 15 and also applies to Tidal’s independent artist franchise Tidal Upload. Tidal will also ban AI-generated music that is associated with “fraudulent activities,” a category that includes songs that impersonate established artists and attempts to “deceive listeners.”
“Artists should have the freedom to create with AI tools and listeners should have the autonomy to choose the type of content they consume,” the new AI policy states. “Due to the issues associated with the influx of AI-generated content, we will hold AI-generated content to a higher standard of content integrity.”
Tidal said that while AI tools in music production have existed for some time, they have recently become “more commonplace and advanced.” Therefore, such labels are necessary, and the service plans to start its mandatory labels with fully generated songs before expanding them to songs essentially generated using AI “as AI detection methods become more reliable.”
The move differs from Spotify and Apple Music’s requirements, which place the responsibility of providing AI labels on artists and distributors. According to Billboard, Apple Music told its partners in a March memo that AI-generated music represented less than 1% of all weekly plays and that the company had internal tools to detect whether artists’ work was generated by AI.
Robert Andersen, head of Tidal at developer Block, which runs the streaming service, wrote on X that Tidal receives “an overwhelming amount of AI-generated music from third parties.”
“It has been clear for some time that we need to evolve our platform and standards to accommodate this new type of submission in our catalog,” he wrote. “That’s why today we’re announcing an AI-generated music policy designed to deliver a great experience for our listeners while protecting the authenticity and livelihoods of artists and rights holders.”
The ban on royalties is perhaps the most significant addition to the policy, as Tidal has typically paid artists more than competitors like Spotify. Spotify acknowledged in its AI policy that it is a “licensed music platform where royalties are paid based on listener engagement and all music is treated equally, regardless of the tools used to create it.”
In Tidal’s case, the company acknowledged the ongoing debate over officially licensed works used in AI-generated music, adding that “this debate will continue as technology advances and rights holders and AI music platforms develop licensing models.”
“Tidal’s priority is to ensure that royalties flow to original works produced, written and performed directly by people,” it said. “We will therefore not knowingly attribute royalties to music that we believe is entirely AI-generated.”
https://variety.com/2026/music/news/tidal-label-ai-generated-music-ban-royalties-from-ai-songs-1236798543/
