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- Hacker News
- > 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.)
by nunez - 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
by hmokiguess - That's a genuinely grim thought, but not unrealistic either. I'll have to chew on that one, it's interesting.by cseleborg
- 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.by habosa
- 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.
by cseleborg - 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.
- 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.
- I mean you can outsource it to users, which also allows you to organically make exceptions for AI music that is actually popular.
You really just want your users, who hate AI, to see a big "REPORT AI" button they can click. The problem you are trying to solve is the perception among your users that your platform is dominated by AI slop. So at the end of the day the only thing you actually have to figure out is what your users think is AI slop, have a quick trigger on un-popular stuff, and basically never enforce on popular stuff unless there is actually some controversy.
by neutronicus - Let's go with impossible.by jrm4
- Maybe if enough AI produces self-report their work as AI, and enough non-AI producers are honest about uploading non-AI work, they'll quickly have the necessary amount of good-enough data to train good classifiers?by cseleborg
- 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.by Nifty3929
- 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
by butlike - 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.
by totallygeeky - Allow AI, but require labeling as such, and demonetize.
Would love for YouTube to follow suit on this
by jorisw - Would you really like to take action and earn less money? Morality is dead...by spaqin
- > 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.
by elicash - +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.by asah
- 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.by mvdtnz
- 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.
by gwbas1c - Spotify is the same. This impersonation ought to be illegal.by esafak
- This is a discovery problem, and all the streaming platforms are trash at discovery because discovery is a long tail problem. That’s where record labels shine because of individualized A&R and tastemakers, which is why record label consolidation is antithetical to quality music output (edit: and diverse).
However, you’ll also notice that none of these streaming platforms highlight which record label is responsible for which release, though you can find it under additional info sometimes. Tin foil hat is that the large record companies don’t want such a feature to be present on streaming platforms. But more likely is that product employees at streaming platforms don’t think users care about record labels, which they’re right, 80% of users don’t currently care about which record label releases which track or recording.
Give me a streaming platform with “Label” as a first class entity that I can like, follow, etc. My theory is that it will produce a much healthier long tail, because trustworthy labels are already a robust source of non-AI music.
- 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.by dkhenry
- Agreed. Especially since there is similar functionality for explicit tracks
- Nothing personal, but there's something hilarious about "I demand a quick and easy solution to a likely practically impossible problem once you get into details" -- in opposition to AI.by jrm4
- This is the key point, they're all enforcing tagging with no means to filter it out entirely.by ActionHank
- 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?by ktbwrestler
- 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.
by postalcoder - Why don’t they play indie alternative pop music? It’s easier than ever to create, surely there are many bands with almost no audience who would give away their music for free. The reason may be discovery, but they could band together and make a centralized platform.
- For me personally, I no longer hear the difference between AI generated music and new pop-songs. Not sure what that says about me or the music industry.by olmo23
- 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.
by Grombobulous