AI music has become one of the most controversial phenomena in the modern music industry, as it floods streaming platforms with thousands of songs a day. In 2025, Deezer reported that 28% of music uploaded to the platform was fully created by AI, while by the end of the year this number had reached 50,000 tracks a day, representing 34% of total uploads.
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The use of genetic AI in pop music started out as almost a gimmick. There was a sense of experimentation in Taryn Southern ’s 2018 albums I AM AI and Holly Herndon’s 2019 Proto, which were created with significant help from AI. Other artists explored the limits of tools like Google’s Magenta and even trained their own models. However, things changed rapidly with the release of Suno in December 2023 and Udio in April 2024.
Suno and Udio allow users to quickly create entire compositions with a simple text command. AI music was no longer the domain of technical experts and fringe experimenters; it became accessible to anyone with an internet connection. This led to an influx of machine-generated music reaching streaming platforms.
The explosion of AI music and the impact on artists
Things have gotten even worse on Deezer, where daily uploads of AI-generated content have reached 75,000, threatening to overtake real human-generated music. Spotify removed over 75 million spam tracks in just 12 months. Despite the massive amount of AI content, actual listening behavior tells a different story – on Deezer, AI songs account for less than 3% of total streams.
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Deezer was the first major streaming platform to implement a system to detect and label AI-generated content. The service also prevents its algorithm from recommending it and has de-populated 85% of streams. In a recent press release, Deezer CEO Alexis Lanternier said: “AI music is far from a fringe phenomenon, and as daily deliveries continue to grow, we hope the entire music ecosystem will join us in protecting artists’ rights and promoting transparency for fans.”
Qobuz a detection system. It also published an AI roadmap, promising that it would never use AI to editorialize or curate its content. The reaction from listeners has become increasingly negative – according to a report by Luminate comparing attitudes from May to November 2025, overall interest in AI music fell from -13% to -20%.
Economic impacts and the future of the industry
The global recorded music market is set to reach $29.6 billion in 2024, with the streaming economy surpassing $20 billion in revenue for the first time. However, market concentration is extreme: Spotify, Apple and Amazon control 90% of music streaming. In 2024, only 0.6% of Spotify artists earned at least $10,000, highlighting the existing inequality that AI is exacerbating.
The central problem centers on the pro rata model of streaming platforms: if an artist's catalog represents a certain percentage of total streams, they receive that percentage of total royalty payments. When fraudulent AI streams inflate the denominator, legitimate artists receive smaller shares of the fixed revenue pool.
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Industry analysts predict that AI genetics for music creation will gradually increase as more streaming platforms explore AI-powered production and collaboration. At the same time, AI-powered recommendation systems will become increasingly sophisticated. The industry is facing pressure to develop models that balance innovation with fairness, especially as younger demographics increasingly reject AI-generated content, according to the source.
