Apple Music’s Big AI Test: Will Fans Always Choose the Human?

Last week, Apple Music made a surprisingly consequential decision: The music streamer will be putting a “Made With AI” label on AI-generated tracks, an unusually revealing move in an industry suddenly drowning in synthetic music that nobody seems particularly interested in hearing.

Under Apple’s new policy, content providers will have to identify any track in which generative AI was used to create a material part of the song. The move follows similar tags Apple introduced internally last March, requiring creators to disclose machine-made music. 

Spotify, which hosts a staggering 777 million monthly active users and over 30 percent of the global streaming music market, is moving in the same direction. It said recently that it would begin labeling AI artists on its platform and keep those artists out of editorial and algorithmic recommendations.

While AI-generated songs are sprouting like weeds, these songs aren’t landing with consumers: Fully AI-generated tracks reportedly account for roughly a third of Apple’s monthly uploads, yet generate less than 0.5 percent of listening.

That should sound familiar to anyone who watched the Sora cycle play out. The technology can produce an almost limitless supply of astonishing content. The bigger question was whether anyone actually wanted to watch it, and as it turned out, not many did.

But music presents a harder problem for AI: Fans don’t just fall in love with songs. They fall in love with artists.