We learn from Music Business Worldwide (HERE) that over half the uploads to major streaming platforms contain AI content. It’s a rough metric, but enough to motivate our question: How do the biggest music streamers handle incoming AI content?
We selected six leading platforms: Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, iHeartMedia, Amazon Music, and QQ Music (Tencent). Below, quick ummaries of their basic public-facing stances.
Spotify: Allows AI-generated music. At the same time, the service has deleted more than 75 million spam tracks.Spam tracks are not necessarily produced by AI, but they are characteristically mass-produced to intentionally manipulate recommendation service algorithms which determine play frequency. They are often just long enough to qualify as tracks, and sometimes use voice clones to sound like human singers.
Deezer: Identifies fully AI-created tracks, and tags them. Deezer recently reported that AI spam constitutes more than half of daily uploads. Deezer removes them all from recommendations and curated playlists. Further, Deezer observes that AI music represents more than 50% of daily uploads — that can be 90,000 synthetic tracks per day.
Apple Music: Apple uses AI to help users create personal playlists; that feature depends on AI to build those playlists from text descriptions. When it comes to AI-generated tracks, Apple relies on metadata and curation rules. Users have to supply tags if AI was used to create a “material portion” (vaguely undefined though that be). That legitimacy engine evaluates the audio track, the album artwork, the song lyrics, and the music video. Last but certainly not least, Apple uses AI to catch artificial manipulation of streams and charts.
iHeartMedia iHeart owns the “Guaranteed Human” policy, a directive which applies unconditionally across the company’s on-air and digital platforms. Initiated in 2025, the directive prohibits consumer-facing audio which mimics or replaces human creativity, including cloned vocalists. It also blocks AI radio DJs and hosts
Amazon Music: With perhaps the least strict AI-related uploading policy, Amazon Music does not provide a published disclosure or policy. Takedowns do happen, but there is no gate at the uploading stage. Further, Amazon has reacted warmly to the emergence of AI playlist generators, and owns the home-grown Maestro generator (in beta; available to select users) which builds tracks and playlists from text or speech prompts.
QQ Music (Tencent)
QQ Music is a subsidiary app owned by Chinese behemoth Tencent. It is infused with AI capability; users can generate complete original tracks including vocals from text prompts. Those tracks can go straight to the public app. The underlying technology is user-friendly and prompt-based. A simple sentence, paired with a choice of genre, can output a fully realized song track. Unsurprisingly, the company has reported substantial increases in AI-made tracks in playlists and track rankings.
