Beatport has announced plans to ban songs that are fully or majority generated by AI.

The online music store and streaming platform confirmed the changes in a new update to its policy. With the new rules, it will be labelling songs on the site that have been made with AI assistance, and removing tracks that were made predominantly or fully by artificial intelligence.

For those tracks rejected from the streaming platform due to violations with the new AI policy, the rights holders will be notified directly.

The changes come following an updated partnership with detection specialist Beatdapp. In the expanded collaboration, the platform will use enhanced technology, systems and processes to detect and identify automated music.

In the Beatport policy, it states that songs made with “AI assistance will still be accepted”, but only if the finished track “remains majority human-made”. Those songs will be accepted, but “tagged during ingestion, giving Beatport’s curation team a clearer picture of what it is reviewing and featuring.”

Speaking about the new changes, Beatport CEO, Matt Gralen shared: “Beatport exists to serve DJs and empower artists and labels. This means partnering with our community and providing confidence in what our platform offers.

“While new production techniques have driven electronic music forward since the beginning, there is a difference between a tool that assists human creation and a system that replaces it entirely. Beatport is built on the former.”

Co-founder and co-CEO Andrew Batey also shared that the expanded partnership with Beatdapp will allow for “greater transparency” for listeners while still “protecting human creativity”.

In the statement from Beatport, announcing the changes, the platform shared that the decision to crack down on fully AI-generated music was spearheaded because it reflects the views of its users. In a survey, they found that 77 per cent of users had a “firm preference for supporting human creators” and 60 per cent would refuse to listen to AI-generated songs.

Only eight per cent of users said they were open to playing AI music, and just 13 per cent said they would consider playing it, provided artists were properly compensated.

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The move comes as there has been a significant rise in AI-generated music available online in recent years. Last month, Deezer shared that AI-generated music now surpasses 50 per cent of daily uploads on the platform – the first time that human-made music has been outnumbered by AI alternatives – and before then a study found that 97 per cent of people “can’t tell the difference” between real and AI music.

Other streaming platforms cracking down on AI music include Apple Music, which is also labelling music generated by artificial intelligence, and TIDAL, which is no longer paying royalties to any music made entirely by AI.

Deezer has tried to combat the rise in music made entirely by artificial intelligence too, launching a tool to detect AI-generated music on playlists from 20 different streaming services.

At the start of the year, Bandcamp revealed that it had banned all music made with AI, and SoundCloud clarified its stance on AI after a wave of backlash from users. More recently, Spotify announced a new labelling system so that users can quickly identify artists and content generated by AI. Those changes come following the platform confirming that it was removing 75million “spammy tracks” and targeting impersonators last September.

In March, the government announced it would ditch “deeply damaging” plans to allow AI firms to use copyrighted works without permission.

The move stemmed from Paul McCartney, Kate Bush, Dua Lipa and Elton John leading a campaign, urging the government to protect artists’ work from being ripped off, after the government previously put forward plans to change copyright rules and let AI firms “steal” copyrighted works without paying or seeking consent from creators.

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