Muhammad Ibadurrohman
Paris, France – In a significant move to combat streaming fraud and manage an unprecedented influx of artificial intelligence-generated content, French music streaming service Deezer announced on Tuesday, July 21, a new policy to remove AI tracks suspected of being involved in streaming manipulation. The platform will also purge AI-generated recordings that have not been streamed for at least six months, addressing concerns over catalog bloat and environmental impact. This decisive action comes after a staggering revelation that fully AI-generated recordings constituted over 50% of all new music uploads on the service at their peak in June 2026, amounting to an estimated 90,000 tracks.
The new measures underscore an escalating battle between streaming platforms and the misuse of generative AI technologies, which have democratized music creation but simultaneously opened new avenues for fraudulent activity. Deezer’s proactive stance aims to safeguard the integrity of its catalog, protect the interests of legitimate artists, and ensure fair royalty distribution in an increasingly complex digital landscape.
The Alarming Surge of AI Music and Its Economic Impact
The announcement follows a period of rapid growth in AI-generated music, which has quickly transitioned from a niche curiosity to a dominant force in content uploads. Deezer’s internal data reveals a dramatic escalation: in January 2025, when the company first implemented its proprietary AI detection system, fully AI-generated tracks accounted for approximately 10% of daily uploads. Fast forward to June 2026, and this figure had exploded to over 50%, representing tens of thousands of tracks uploaded daily. Over the course of 2025 alone, Deezer’s system detected and tagged more than 13.4 million fully AI-generated tracks on its service, illustrating the sheer scale of the phenomenon.
This exponential growth presents a multifaceted challenge for streaming services. While AI offers innovative tools for music creation and exploration, its unregulated use has been exploited for sophisticated streaming fraud schemes. Deezer previously reported that up to 85% of streams attributed to fully AI tracks were fraudulent. These schemes typically involve bots or manipulated accounts generating artificial streams to inflate play counts, thereby siphoning off royalty payments that would otherwise go to human artists. The financial implications for the music industry are substantial, as a diluted royalty pool means less revenue for genuine creators and rights holders. Industry estimates suggest that streaming fraud costs the music industry hundreds of millions of dollars annually, eroding trust and distorting market metrics.
Deezer’s Proactive Stance Against Fraud and Inactivity
Under the new policy, Deezer will actively identify and remove any AI track that its advanced detection systems suspect of being involved in streaming fraud. This builds upon existing measures, where the service already excludes fraudulent streams from royalty calculations. By removing the tracks entirely, Deezer aims to eliminate the source of manipulation, thereby cleaning its catalog and preventing future attempts at exploitation. This move is a critical escalation from merely withholding payments to actively curating the content available on the platform.
Furthermore, Deezer will also target AI tracks that have failed to garner any streams for a period of six months or more. This measure addresses not only the issue of catalog bloat but also aligns with broader environmental and operational sustainability goals. Aurelien Herault, Chief Innovation Officer at Deezer, highlighted this concern in a previous interview with Billboard. He articulated that the sheer volume of new music being uploaded daily, much of which goes unlistened, poses a significant storage challenge. "This is a serious topic for us, and we already removed some content that was using too much space — because it’s not only an economic issue, it’s also an ecological one," Herault stated. "Do we need to store all this content so we all have the same catalog and all have a copy of the same things? It’s really a question worth thinking about, and we already have had some discussion to remove some content, especially because a lot of content is not listened to at all." The removal of dormant AI tracks directly tackles this environmental footprint by reducing the data storage requirements and associated energy consumption of maintaining an ever-expanding, yet largely unutilized, digital library.
A Chronology of Deezer’s AI Policy Evolution
Deezer has been at the forefront of grappling with the rise of AI-generated music, progressively refining its policies in response to evolving challenges:
- January 2025: Deezer publicly announces its plans to track and tag fully AI-generated recordings. At this initial stage, its proprietary AI detection system flagged approximately 10% of daily uploads as being AI-generated. The service concurrently implemented policies to manage the visibility of these tracks: all detected AI songs would be removed from algorithmic recommendations and would not be eligible for editorial playlisting. However, they would remain accessible on the site for fans who actively sought them out. This marked the industry’s earliest comprehensive attempt to categorize and manage AI content.
- Throughout 2025: Deezer’s AI detection system continued to monitor and tag AI-generated content. By the end of the year, over 13.4 million fully AI-generated tracks had been identified and categorized on the service. This period also saw the implementation of a policy to exclude streams found to be manipulated from royalty payments, addressing the immediate financial impact of fraud.
- June 2026: A pivotal moment occurs as fully AI-generated recordings surge to represent over 50% of all new music uploads on Deezer at their peak. This alarming statistic, equating to an estimated 90,000 AI tracks, underscored the urgent need for more robust intervention. The exponential growth rate demonstrated that previous measures, while important, were insufficient to stem the tide of potentially fraudulent or low-value content.
- July 21, 2026: Deezer announces its most aggressive policy yet: the outright removal of AI tracks suspected of streaming fraud and those that have not been streamed for at least six months. This marks a significant shift from passive management (tagging, demotion, royalty exclusion) to active content curation and removal.
The Broader Challenge: Streaming Fraud and Royalty Dilution
The problem of streaming fraud extends far beyond Deezer, plaguing the entire music streaming ecosystem. Fraudulent streams, often generated by bot farms or sophisticated manipulation networks, inflate play counts for tracks, leading to an unfair redistribution of royalty revenue. The current pro-rata payment system, where a platform’s total revenue is pooled and then distributed based on each artist’s share of total streams, makes the system particularly vulnerable. When fraudulent tracks accumulate millions of artificial streams, they effectively dilute the earnings of legitimate artists, diverting funds away from genuine creative work.
Major labels and independent artists alike have voiced increasing concerns about this issue. For emerging artists, whose livelihoods often depend on incremental streaming revenue, the impact of fraud can be devastating. It creates an uneven playing field, where genuine artistic merit can be overshadowed by artificially boosted content. The economic stakes are high, with reports from industry bodies like the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) consistently highlighting the pervasive nature of digital piracy and fraud as significant threats to the music industry’s revenue streams. While Deezer’s latest action specifically targets AI-generated tracks, it sets a precedent for how platforms might address other forms of streaming manipulation in the future.
Industry Reactions and Calls for Collaboration
Deezer’s latest policy shift is expected to resonate across the music industry, prompting reactions from various stakeholders. Artists and artist advocacy groups are likely to welcome the move, viewing it as a necessary step to protect their earnings and creative integrity. Many have long called for streaming platforms to take more aggressive measures against fraud and low-quality content that clogs the system. Organisations such as the Artists Rights Alliance and unions representing musicians have consistently lobbied for greater transparency and fairness in royalty distribution.
Major record labels and independent distributors, who face the complex task of vetting vast quantities of new music, may also see this as a positive development. It could reduce the burden of identifying and reporting fraudulent content, allowing them to focus resources on promoting legitimate artists. However, the industry will also be watching closely to see how Deezer’s detection systems differentiate between genuinely creative AI-assisted music and purely fraudulent content.
Other streaming platforms, including giants like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube Music, are likely to be evaluating Deezer’s strategy. While some have introduced their own measures to combat fraud (e.g., stricter upload guidelines, improved detection algorithms), a unified industry approach remains elusive. Alexis Lanternier, CEO of Deezer, emphasized this need for collective action. "Deezer has been at the frontline of fighting fraud and reducing payment dilution related to AI music for almost two years," Lanternier stated. "Now that half of all daily uploads are AI-generated tracks, we are taking additional steps to safeguard the rights of artists and songwriters, while maintaining focus on music that fans actually love. We have reached a pivotal moment, but we have the technology to keep track of the development, and an ambition to do what’s right. If the industry can align and come together to create shared standards, we can build a healthy and sustainable music ecosystem, where great music wins." His call for industry alignment underscores the fact that streaming fraud is a systemic issue requiring a coordinated response, potentially leading to new shared standards for content moderation and royalty payment models across the entire digital music landscape.
The Nuance of AI: "Fully" vs. "Partially" Generated Content
A critical distinction in Deezer’s policy, and indeed in the broader debate surrounding AI in music, is between "fully" and "partially" AI-generated songs. Deezer’s AI detection tool, similar to most others currently on the market, is primarily designed to flag recordings that are 100% generated by AI models from prolific platforms like Suno and Udio. These tools can create complete songs—lyrics, melody, instrumentation, and vocals—from simple text prompts.
Conversely, the policy does not currently flag or penalize songs that are "partially" generated by AI. This category includes music where artists use AI tools as aids in their creative process—for mastering, generating specific sounds, arranging elements, or even creating AI-generated vocals that are then integrated into a human-composed track. This distinction is crucial for fostering innovation while simultaneously curbing misuse. Many artists and producers are increasingly incorporating AI as a legitimate tool, and overly broad restrictions could stifle creative exploration. Deezer’s current focus on fully AI-generated tracks, particularly those linked to fraud or inactivity, indicates an attempt to strike a balance between allowing technological progress and maintaining artistic integrity and fair compensation.
Implications for the Future of Music
Deezer’s bold new policy has significant implications for the future trajectory of the music industry.
- For Deezer: The platform stands to enhance its reputation as a champion for artists and a leader in combating digital fraud. By cleaning its catalog, Deezer could offer a higher-quality listening experience for subscribers and potentially reduce operational costs associated with storing dormant content. However, the technical challenge of accurately identifying fraudulent AI content, without inadvertently removing legitimate or experimental AI-assisted music, remains considerable.
- For Artists: Legitimate human artists stand to benefit from a fairer royalty pool, as fraudulent streams are curtailed. This could lead to a more equitable distribution of revenue and renewed faith in the streaming ecosystem. For creators leveraging AI responsibly, the policy may necessitate clearer disclosure or stronger differentiation of their work from purely machine-generated content.
- For AI Developers: The increasing scrutiny from DSPs like Deezer will put pressure on AI music generation platforms to implement stricter ethical guidelines, robust content moderation tools, and potentially even watermarking technologies to help distinguish AI-generated content. This could drive innovation in responsible AI development within the music tech sector.
- For Consumers: A cleaner, more authentic music library will likely improve the user experience, reducing exposure to low-quality or manipulated content. However, some might argue that it could also limit the discovery of experimental AI music that might not immediately gain traction but holds artistic merit.
- Legal and Regulatory Landscape: Deezer’s actions contribute to an ongoing global conversation about copyright, intellectual property rights, and the regulation of AI in creative industries. As more platforms adopt similar measures, it could accelerate the development of international legal frameworks and industry standards for AI-generated content.
In conclusion, Deezer’s latest policy represents a critical turning point in the streaming industry’s response to the proliferation of AI-generated music. By targeting both fraudulent and dormant AI tracks, the platform is taking a comprehensive approach to address economic, operational, and ethical challenges. While the path forward will undoubtedly involve continued technological development and industry-wide collaboration, Deezer’s move signals a firm commitment to fostering a sustainable and equitable music ecosystem where human creativity remains paramount.
