Tidal is drawing a line on AI-generated music, and money is the lever. The streaming service published new policies today laying out how it will “protect artists” and “inform listeners,” according to The Verge AI. The headline move: starting today, tracks Tidal identifies as 100 percent AI-generated will no longer earn royalties. The platform isn’t banning them. It just won’t pay out on them.
This is significant because it shifts the fight from removal to economics. Instead of trying to scrub AI tracks off the service, Tidal is letting them stay while cutting off the revenue. “Tidal’s priority is ensuring royalties go to original works directly produced, written, and performed by people,” the company’s announcement reads. “We will therefore not knowingly attribute royalties to music we identify as wholly AI-generated.”
What’s changing, and when
The rollout comes in two waves, per The Verge AI:
- Today: Tracks flagged as fully AI-generated stop earning royalties.
- July 15th: Those tracks get a visible icon labeling them as AI-generated, so listeners know what they’re streaming.
Tidal also says it plans to go further as detection improves. Once its tools get more reliable, the label will expand to cover music that’s “substantially AI-generated,” not just tracks made entirely by machines.
Pushing responsibility onto distributors
What stands out here is that Tidal doesn’t want to own this problem alone. The company says identifying AI music “should not be its responsibility alone” and plans to “begin to enforce” an expectation that content distributors label AI-generated uploads themselves. In other words, the platforms feeding tracks into Tidal will be on the hook to flag them upfront.
Tidal didn’t say which detection tools it’s using. That’s worth watching, because the whole policy hinges on accurate identification, and false positives could hit legitimate artists who use AI in their workflow.
Cracking down on fraud
Starting in mid-July, Tidal will also remove or block “AI-generated music associated with fraudulent activity.” The company defines that broadly:
- Music designed to deceive listeners or interfere with authentic artists
- Tracks that exploit someone’s name, likeness, or music
- High-volume uploads
- “Unusual streaming activity”
That last category points at a real problem across streaming: bot-driven play farms and mass uploads built to siphon royalties from the same pool real artists draw from.
Why this matters for the industry
Tidal isn’t first to act here, and the comparison is telling. The Verge AI notes that competitors took different routes:
- Spotify launched a verification program in April, handing confirmed human artists a green checkmark and a “Verified by Spotify” badge. Profiles that mostly upload AI content don’t qualify.
- Deezer built detection tools to reduce the visibility of fully AI-generated tracks at upload, and last month launched a website that scans your playlists on other platforms to spot AI tracks.
So the field is splitting into approaches. Spotify rewards verified humans. Deezer buries AI tracks in the rankings. Tidal goes after the wallet. None of them are banning AI music outright, which tells you where this is headed: coexistence with guardrails, not prohibition.
The royalty angle is the sharpest of the three. Streaming royalties come from a shared pot, so every dollar paid to a flood of AI tracks is a dollar pulled away from human musicians. By refusing to pay on fully AI-generated work, Tidal removes the financial incentive to spam the platform in the first place.
What to expect next
If you make music, the practical takeaway is clear. Label your AI use honestly, and expect distributors to start demanding that disclosure before tracks go live. If you’re watching the industry, keep an eye on how Tidal defines “substantially AI-generated” when that broader rule kicks in. The line between a human track with AI assistance and an AI track with human touch-ups is exactly where the next round of fights will land.
Tidal’s bet is that money talks louder than bans. Whether its detection holds up under pressure is the open question. More details are available at the original report from The Verge AI.