Tidal labels AI-generated music and cuts royalties for those tracks

Tidal just drew a line in the sand. The streaming service announced that tracks identified as 100% AI-generated will no longer earn royalties on its platform, effective immediately.

Starting July 15, those same tracks will also carry a visible “AI” badge in the app, giving listeners the option to filter them out entirely. It’s a two-step approach: cut the money first, then make the labeling transparent.

What Tidal is actually doing

Rather than banning AI-generated music outright, Tidal is taking a more surgical approach. The platform will keep AI tracks available for listening but strip them of any ability to generate revenue. That includes both royalty payments and direct-to-fan sales.

“Tidal’s priority is ensuring royalties go to original works directly produced, written, and performed by people,” the company said in its announcement. “We will therefore not knowingly attribute royalties to music we identify as wholly AI-generated.”

The key word there is “wholly.” Tidal’s definition of AI-generated music covers content substantially produced by generative AI with little to no human contribution. A producer who uses AI tools as part of a larger creative process likely won’t get flagged. Someone who types a prompt into Suno and uploads the output probably will.

The policy applies to both new uploads and existing catalog releases. So tracks that have already been earning royalties on the platform could see that income vanish if they’re identified as fully machine-made.

What Tidal hasn’t disclosed is which detection tools it plans to use for identification. AI music detection is still a developing field, and accuracy varies significantly depending on the sophistication of the generation tool. That ambiguity could become a friction point as the policy rolls out.

Why this matters beyond music streaming

Tidal has always positioned itself as the artist-first alternative to Spotify and Apple Music. This move reinforces that branding, but it also addresses a very real economic problem.

The rise of generative AI music tools has made it trivially easy to flood streaming platforms with low-effort tracks. Some of these tracks are designed to impersonate established artists, siphoning streams and, by extension, royalty payments from the humans whose styles they mimic.

Tidal’s approach also stands in contrast to how some record labels and platforms have responded to AI music. Several major labels have pursued licensing agreements with AI music companies, essentially trying to monetize the technology rather than restrict it. Tidal is going the other direction, choosing demarcation and demonetization over integration.

The risk, of course, is enforcement. AI detection tools are imperfect, and the line between “AI-assisted” and “AI-generated” gets blurrier with every model update. Tidal’s policy will only be as strong as its ability to accurately identify the tracks it targets. False positives could alienate the very artists the platform is trying to protect.

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