The Great Unveiling

Once upon a time, the recording studio was a sanctuary of sweat and soul, where microphones captured the tremble of human hands and the crackle of imagination. Now, in 2025, a new current surges through the digital soundscape: machines singing songs of their own design. Deezer has revealed that 28% of its new music uploads are fully AI-generated, a tidal wave of synthetic sound that has quietly grown from 10% at the year’s dawn to nearly a third by September.

This is not just background noise. It is a reckoning, a storm at the gates of artistry. Thirty thousand artificial tracks a day flood the platform, though only a fraction of listeners around 0.5% actually press play. And even then, Deezer warns, up to 70% of those streams may be fraudulent, powered not by fans but by bots.

Deezer’s Defensive Lines

To meet the flood, Deezer has armed itself with new tools. AI detection systems now tag synthetic content, stripping it from algorithmic recommendations and editorial playlists. In other words: the machine music can live on the platform, but it will not march alongside the human-made anthems shaping the culture. Fraudulent plays are excised from royalty pools, a shot across the bow against bad actors who would game the system.

Where once silence met innovation, resistance now meets automation. Deezer is framing itself not as a censor, but as a guardian of balance: let the machines sing, but do not let them steal the stage.

Spotify and the Silent Surge

Meanwhile, Spotify stands as the colossus in the room. Ten thousand AI songs are said to be uploaded daily, yet there is no mandatory labeling, no detection requirement, and no floodgates. Critics whisper of algorithmic feeds filling with low-effort, machine-spun tracks, suffocating discovery for flesh-and-blood musicians.

Apple Music, Amazon, and others march quietly in the same direction opaque, with no clear policy on AI disclosure. SoundCloud thrives as a playground for AI creators, while YouTube Music’s Content ID chases copyright ghosts without ever truly confronting the AI question.

The Legal Battleground

In the courts, the real war has begun. Universal, Sony, and Warner are suing AI companies like Suno and Udio, accusing them of training on catalogs without consent. In Sweden, a new AI music license has been introduced, allowing songwriters to be compensated if their work becomes grist for the machine mills. The U.S. and EU circle the issue with new regulations, preparing to demand transparency where platforms have been silent.

The stakes are staggering: if fully AI-generated works cannot be copyrighted, what happens when half a platform’s catalog has no legal owner? If voices can be cloned and styles stolen, who guards the identity of the artist?

Why It Matters

This is more than a fight over streams. It is the age-old tension between creation and imitation, soul and circuitry. Deezer’s report is a warning shot: the flood has already begun. The industry can either build levees of fairness and transparency, or drown in a sea of indistinguishable tracks.

The question remains will we remember the voices of the artists who carved songs from heartbreak and hope, or will we surrender the airwaves to machines whispering in the dark?

Join the Conversation

What do you think should platforms label and separate AI music, or embrace it as part of the evolution of sound? Share your thoughts below, and let’s shape the soundtrack of tomorrow together.