Today we're in the streaming wars, where the robots flooded the shop, and one platform just changed the locks.
Coffee at the ready…
The Big Sip
The music industry finally found a lever AI music feels, money.
TIDAL's new policy strips royalties from any track it deems fully AI-made. The song stays up, wears an "AI" badge, earns nothing. Labels didn't slow the flood. Cutting the cheque might.
Turns out the robots were only ever in it for the money.
Same as the rest of us.
Here’s Your Brew
Deezer's inbox shows it.
The French streamer now takes in almost 75,000 fully AI-generated tracks a day, 44% of everything uploaded.
In early 2025, it was 10,000.
But no one plays them.
AI tracks are just 1-3% of Deezer's streams, and up to 85% of those are fake. Bots juice the plays to skim royalties.
The music is just the cash cow.
So the platforms split.
TIDAL and Deezer go after the money. Spotify and Apple mostly stick to tags and filters. TIDAL's bet is blunt. Kill the payout, kill the reason to flood.
A robot arms race, refereed by more robots.
Creators want more than platform rules.
On 1 July, Australia's music industry, led by APRA AMCOS, sent the government an open letter. It demands AI firms stop training on their songs without permission or payment.
Two fronts, one week:
Platforms choking the money, artists chasing the law.
Two Sides, One Mug
Pro: Cutting AI royalties defends human artists whose pay shrinks every time a bot farm floods the pool.
Con: "Fully AI" resists a clean definition, so honest musicians using AI tools risk a wrong label and a lost cheque.
Our read: The money lever aims at the right target. The detection has to be surgical, or it punishes the tool and lets the fraud walk.
Receipt of the Day
[Report] Deezer Newsroom: "AI-Generated Tracks Now Represent 44% of All New Uploaded Music"
The finding: 75,000 AI tracks arrive daily, and up to 85% of their streams are fraudulent.
Why it matters: The flood is a payout scam wearing headphones. The listening is mostly bots.
Spit Take
Up to 85% of AI-track streams are fake.
(Deezer)
Extra Curricular Coffee Break Links
[Report] US DOJ: AI music fraudster pleads guilty. The full blueprint: hundreds of thousands of AI songs, bot armies, $8m skimmed from real artists. Sentencing lands 29 July.
[Report] TechCrunch: 97% of listeners can't tell AI from human. Deezer's blind test explains why the slop slips through. Nobody catches it by ear.
[Analysis] CISAC: a quarter of creators' income sits at risk by 2028. The research behind the fight puts the figure at €4bn by 2028.
Mugshot 📊
Should a fully AI-made track earn royalties?
◯ No, humans only
◯ Yes, a bop's a bop
◯ Only if it's clearly labelled
◯ Ask me again after it writes a better chorus
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