Policy tracker
Who allows AI music, who bans it, who just labels it.
Every streaming platform and distributor has moved on this in the last eighteen months, mostly quietly. This is where each one stands, with the date of the change.
Last reviewed 21 September 2026. Policies in this area change often. If you find one of these out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
| Platform | Disclosure required | Bans fully-AI | Listener label | Dates |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spotify | Yes, via DDEX self-disclosure | No | AI credits and AI persona badges | Policy 25 Sep 2025; AI credits Apr 2026; persona badges Aug 2026 |
| Deezer | No, detection-based | Removes fraud-linked AI tracks | Yes, tags AI music for listeners | Detector Jan 2025; listener tag Jun 2026 |
| YouTube | Yes, mandatory | No | Yes, disclosure label | Announced Nov 2023, rolled out 2024 |
| Apple Music | Becoming mandatory for suppliers | No | Planned | Transparency tags Mar 2026; reported mandatory Aug 2026 |
| DistroKid | Yes, AI credits | No | n/a | Undated support policy |
| TuneCore | Yes | Conditional, on training-data licensing | n/a | GenAI framework; blocked some generators Apr 2026 |
| CD Baby | n/a | Yes, outright ban | n/a | Policy updated 18 Dec 2025 |
| Bandcamp | n/a | Yes, outright ban | n/a | Jan 2026 |
| Beatport | n/a | Fully-AI withheld at ingestion | AI-assisted tagged | Aug 2026 |
| Tidal | n/a | Excluded from royalty-bearing streams | Yes | Reported 2026 |
| Amazon Music | No stated policy found | Unknown | Unknown | No published policy as of Sep 2026 |
The structural point
The industry chose self-disclosure. Nobody is checking it.
Almost every policy above rests on the same mechanism: the person uploading says what made the track, through a DDEX metadata field, and the platform believes them.
Spotify's own wording on this is the most honest sentence anyone in the industry has published about it:
"Because we depend on artist disclosure, the absence of a credit doesn't mean AI wasn't used."
Only one platform runs detection rather than relying on declaration. That is the gap: a voluntary regime with no independent check, in a market where roughly half of new uploads to at least one service are already fully synthetic.
Common questions
Yes. Spotify does not ban AI-generated music. It requires disclosure through DDEX metadata, shows AI credits, and from September 2026 badges AI persona profiles and excludes them from editorial and algorithmic recommendation by default. The disclosure is self-declared, and Spotify states plainly that the absence of a credit does not mean AI was not used.
That depends on the distributor, not on Spotify. CD Baby bans AI-generated content outright and removes it. TuneCore permits it conditionally based on whether the generating model was trained on licensed data. DistroKid asks you to disclose it. Check your distributor first, because that is where a release actually gets stopped.
Sometimes less, or not at all. Tidal excludes AI-labelled tracks from royalty-bearing streams. Deezer demonetises fully-AI tracks linked to streaming fraud and excludes them from algorithmic and editorial surfaces. Spotify excludes badged AI persona profiles from recommendations, which affects discovery rather than rate.
On YouTube it is mandatory. On Spotify and DistroKid it is expected via credits. On Apple Music it is reportedly becoming mandatory for suppliers. Separately, the EU AI Act places obligations on the providers of generative systems rather than on you as an uploader.