Record Companies Want to Regulate AI Tracks. How Do Their Proposals for Charts and Streaming Services Compare?
Categoria: Musica
Billboard runs down the similarities and differences between two recent proposals that would regulate AI music on DSPs and major music charts.
Por Billboard | 06/08/2026
The biggest AI music development of the summer is clear: The record industry feels it’s time to regulate AI songs. In July, a coalition of music creators and the recorded music industry — including the RIAA, A2IM and SAG-AFTRA — came together to announce a proposal for how AI music could be treated across streaming services , aiming for a more uniform approach to regulation. Then, just weeks later, another record industry coalition, including many of the same players, suggested how charts should handle the inevitable rise of some AI-generated hits. Related RIAA, IFPI & More Come Together to Create System for Tagging AI-Generated Songs BE:FIRST Is Ready for the World: Inside the J-Pop Superstars' Long-Planned U.S. Breakthrough Glenn A. Baker, Australian Music Historian and Former Billboard Correspondent, Dies at 74 These announcements mark a significant shift for the record biz. Over the last few years, as AI music went from a rare novelty to an expected, if not always welcome, part of the online experience, the recorded music industry largely stayed out of the growing public discourse about what specifically should be done to mitigate this new reality. Should AI songs be tagged, removed or algorithmically penalized in some way on the web? Should they earn the same royalties and compete for the same charts as entirely human-made content? And there’s always the sticky subject of AI-assisted music, a wide-ranging category that could include anything from a human-made song with a three-second AI-powered guitar lick to a 99% AI-generated tune. Even though the recorded music biz didn’t unite to prescribe any specific remedies for AI-generated music on charts and online platforms until now, the biggest labels’ general position on the effect AI music has had was already clear with the majors’ lawsuits against Suno and Udio in June 2024. In those, the trio claimed that AI music “saturate[s] the market” and “directly compete[s] with, cheapen[s] and ultimately drown[s] out the genuine sound recordings.” In effect, the labels argued, something must be done about the impact of AI music on the marketplace — but exactly what that something should be was unclear. Now, the record business is ready to speak up, and it seems the labels’ solution is just that — labels for AI music. The proposal hinges on stamping AI content on streaming services with a disclosure right beside it, much like a parental advisory sticker on a CD. The charts proposal, meanwhile, is more focused on curbing the appearance of AI-generated songs that were created with an “unauthorized” model, like Suno, which is trained on a wide swath of unlicensed music. For AI-assisted music to be chart-eligible, the proposal also would require it to be “substantially” human made and not raise stream or chart manipulation concerns. So how do these two proposals compare? Related The Recorded Music Industry Wants Labels on