Photo Credit: Andrzej Gdula

The trade association representing music streamers issued a response to the recorded music industry’s announcement of a new AI labeling program.

Trade organization Digital Media Association (DIMA), which represents music streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Amazon, Qobuz, Feed.fm, Pandora, and TIDAL, has issued a response to the announcement made last week by leading recorded music organizations of the introduction of a new AI labeling program.

“DIMA has long advocated for the creators, owners, and distributors of music to provide accurate and timely metadata on all music released and distributed to streaming services. We are following today’s announcement closely and look forward to receiving more detailed and accurate AI metadata, which will strengthen our ability to give fans the transparency they deserve,” said Graham Davies, President and CEO of DIMA.

“That information flows best when it travels the entire path from creator to fan, and our members rely on industry partners to make that possible. Our members look forward to continuing to work with the labels, producers, artists, and distributors, as well as other industry stakeholders and standards bodies such as DDEX, to build a robust supply chain in which consumers can trust.”

The RIAA and IFPI, alongside a coalition of creator advocacy organizations including A2IM, IMPALA, the Recording Academy, the Human Artistry Campaign, WIN, and SAG-AFTRA made the announcement on Friday of a proposed system to tag machine-generated music on streaming services. The system would include two tags that distinguish between “AI-generated” songs and “AI-assisted” songs.

Last week, RIAA Chairman and CEO Mitch Glazier said that lots of music listeners are happy to listen to AI-generated or AI-assisted music—as long as they can tell when a real person was involved.

“Flexibility in the creative process also means that artists who want to use AI in the creative process should be able to do so,” said Glazier. “Transparency is just the best way to have it both ways.”

The proposed tags would be applied to tracks similarly to how the “explicit” tags currently function. At this time, the tags would do nothing to specify in what way AI was used, whether it was involved in the song’s lyrics, composition, or visual art. However, they would indicate whether AI “assisted” in the track’s creation, or whether it was generated by an AI platform.

That said, The Wall Street Journal notes that “AI usage is flagged voluntarily by artists, record labels, and distributors.” Of course, that means there’s still a level of honor system at play.

Deezer proudly touts itself as the first streaming service to detect and tag AI music at the platform level, which began last year. In April, the France-based streamer said it was taking in around 75,000 fully AI-generated tracks a day—over 44% of all newly uploaded tracks. Moreover, up to 85% of streams on fully AI-generated tracks last year were found to be fraudulent and removed from the royalty pool.

In September, Spotify said that it would support the newly proposed DDEX standard for AI disclosures in music credits. In April, the company started testing AI tags in its song credits, but only those specified by the artist, their label, or distributor, rather than automatically detecting tracks using AI. Apple Music launched a similar tagging system in March, which also relies on labels and distributors to disclose AI use.

In February, Qobuz announced an AI-detection system, noting that it would not only tag AI-generated tracks but remove those found to be impersonating artists or faking streams. Similarly, in June, TIDAL laid out a policy to tag tracks it identifies as fully AI-generated and to prevent them from earning royalties.