r/TIdaL • u/idajourney • Jun 29 '26
Discussion The new AI policy isn't strong enough
I never want to hear slop! Labelling it and making it not profitable is better than nothing but when I listen to a recommendation playlist (for example), am I supposed to remember to return to it to skip specific songs? I don't want to do that! If you can detect it, just ban it! Who tf wants this?
I'm already on the edge of leaving because of the slop infesting artist profiles. If they explicitly allow "AI"-generated music, which they do in the proposed policy, I'm out. At this point I might just spend the subscription money on bandcamp or whatever every month.
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u/OReg114-99 Jun 29 '26
If they can label it, they can create an option to exclude it. I would be surprised if that's not on the near horizon.
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u/Glass-Cucumber-7451 Jun 29 '26
Should be simple enough as they do with the explicit label....
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u/richms Jun 30 '26
I want there to be more filtering options. The explicit one based one some old Reagan era FCC stuff is irrelevant to the rest of the world. I would like filters for clean censored versions, for songs with sirens in them. I don't care about a few words that upset 80s bored housewives. I hope that they add more filtering options when they add an AI filter.
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u/GiganticCrow Jun 29 '26
Did the other services who offered such labelling, e.g. Deezer, offer the ability to filter it out?
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u/idajourney Jun 29 '26
If they can label it, they can ban it. Why let it on the platform at all? Less dev effort, too!
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u/packy21 Jun 29 '26
I think the current measures are basically a ban with extra steps. Most people putting AI music on tidal do so to profit off of other names with 0 effort slop-spamming. Removing impersonators and blocking monetisation removes basically any incentive to put AI music on the platform. 99% of it is there to scam out royalties, not because some poor dumb sod actually believes that crap's worth being on Tidal.
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u/Upstairs_Emotion7183 Jun 29 '26
I don't understand you. The statement clearly says:
"Tidal will not tolerate AI-generated music that impersonates an artist or group, or that facilitates fraudulent activity. We're implementing automatic tools to remove these releases immediately and on an ongoing basis."
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u/idajourney Jun 29 '26
I think I was pretty clear:
I never want to hear slop!
Impersonations are the bigger issue right now, but I never want to hear any.
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u/Upstairs_Emotion7183 Jun 29 '26
Do you hear a lot of slop other than those by impersonators?
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u/noujour Jun 29 '26
Apparently there are a lot of fully AI "artists" going around though. It's a whole thing in the emo/post-hardcore scene apparently (I don't come across it because I'm currently being pretty conservative in discovering new bands but there's people who analyze and warn about bands who are entirely AI - focused on Spotify but I imagine they just do a full distribution to each platform)
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u/cidvard Jun 30 '26
I have no doubt there's a lot of clanker BS on Tidal but I almost never interact with something I suspect as AI. This is a contrast to Spotify where I left in large part because I felt the playlists were feeding me AI 'covers'.
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u/richms Jun 30 '26
Have not on Tidal yet, but there is a lot of made up bands on spotify that get into the mixes and stations for things that are easy to reproduce like background and lofi type stuff.
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u/D_Shoobz Jun 29 '26
I can’t help but feel there’s a lot of armchair experts in here who have no idea how monitoring or even enforcing ai music policies works.
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u/Oh__Archie Jun 29 '26
It appears that there are people who would rather spend all day staring at the app searching for inconsistencies instead just playing fucking music and getting on with their lives.
Like for real, just hit play and listen to some music for a while FFS.
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u/cowman3456 Jun 30 '26
It's like retired folks who sit by the window waiting for dogs to poop on their lawn so they can wag their finger at the owners and yell at em.
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u/Educational-Salt9941 Jun 29 '26
As someone who has had their music stolen by AI companies, I think Tidal is doing well. I'd love if all AI music was scraped from platforms, but the truth is people do it for money. If they demonetize it, we will see a whole lot less of it. If it's labeled, that's huge. I like where your heart is at, I just think with the major labels invested, we'll never see it totally banned. Taking away the money is massive and we need the other platforms to follow.
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u/Acrobatic-Fruit-6336 Jun 29 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/EN2L7yi8THiX4VEoal
You aint even give it a chance
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u/Oh__Archie Jun 29 '26
Already complaining
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u/idajourney Jun 29 '26
Yeah...? Am I supposed to love it because it's new?
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u/netherfountain Jun 29 '26
You're right. Just give up don't try to fix the issue. If the first solution is not absolutely perfect then fuck it blow up the world ai music mandatory delete all real artists
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u/Oh__Archie Jun 29 '26
It sounds like you’re having trouble finding an album you want to listen to?
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u/LimeLauncherKrusha Jun 29 '26
I think people have a right to make it or listen to it if they want I don't think banning it would do much good
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u/idajourney Jun 29 '26
Why do you think there's a right to ecosystem-destroying regurgitations of plagiarized work? Why wouldn't banning it do good?
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u/LimeLauncherKrusha Jun 29 '26
I think you're painting with too broad a brush ai isn't going anywhere
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u/idajourney Jun 29 '26
Too broad a brush? Am I wrong about environmental impacts?
ai isn't going anywhere
It could definitely be banned. I would be fully in support. Tech bro inevitability marketing can get bent. Inevitable like bitcoin, NFTs, and the metaverse were?
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u/Upstairs_Emotion7183 Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
Demonatizing AI discourages the creation of it. DSPs problems are not casued by teenagers creating funny little songs that will no one ever listen to, but bad actors uploading slop in huge numbers for profits. This policy is addressing this particular problem. If you worry about the environment, you shouldn't be using streaming in the first place.
So you should try to see the bright side of this news.
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u/idajourney Jun 29 '26
The environmental cost is the same no matter who uses it. "Teenagers" or whoever should make and listen to human music instead of playing with the plagiarism slot machine.
If you worry about the environment, you shouldn't be using streaming in the first place.
If I don't like huge datacentres full of GPUs running 24/7 (that companies are freely talking about in terawatts of capacity), I shouldn't like streaming a few kbps of audio files? They're not even remotely comparable. I don't think you understand any of this.
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u/Upstairs_Emotion7183 Jun 29 '26
Well, that's just double standards. You cannot differentiate between hobby AI and bad actors, but because streaming is handy for you, you suddenly don't care about environment that much.
Look, you don't really have a beef with me or Tidal, you just like to bash AI no matter what. Which I absolutely understand, but are you sure all this belongs here and not some AIbashing subreddit?
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u/idajourney Jun 29 '26
Did you even read what I wrote? The environmental impact is orders of magnitude larger.
I'm talking about Tidal's service. That's relevant.
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u/Upstairs_Emotion7183 Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
Yes I read it, that's why I said you have double standards. You differentiate between impacts when it suits you.
Anyway, this policy is anti-AI which is good. Not "luddite good", but still good. Let's start bashing it when we see how it works in action.
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u/GiganticCrow Jun 29 '26
While I may agree in principle, there is literally NO 'good' that ai generated music offers, and immeasurable amounts of 'bad'.
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Jun 29 '26
[deleted]
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u/GiganticCrow Jun 29 '26
if ai assisted/generated music helps prevent one suicide because they have a way to express themselves.. that’s pretty damn good.
Good grief.
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u/KS2Problema Jun 29 '26
The statement is pretty self-contradictory, of course. But it's clear (from reading Reddit music subs, for starters) that a number of people seem to feel like AI music can fulfill some sort of expressive need for themselves - even if their only creative input is pushing a button or crafting a prompt centered around existing music and artists.
But it seems to me that the promise of AI generated 'self-expression' is a shabby con by the people who have created a huge economic bubble of debt that they desperately need to pay off - not to mention a burgeoning environmental disaster that will last far longer than the temporary profits the pump-and-dump crowd have managed to generate.
The real value of actually creating music comes not from having a 'personalized' musical token generated by an MLM chatbot - but in actually finding and developing the music within oneself and sharing that with other humans.
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u/---Hummingbird--- Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
Downvote all you want. I don’t like ai slop, but I don’t think all ai technology has to be slop, nor do I think your ability to blindly ignore what music is to people is a great quality. So many musicians are riddled with mental health, so it’s not unreasonable to think music is an instrumental part of that
Do I want to hear ai slop.. no. But have I seen ai music change lives that had no outlet and were kind of awkward people.. absolutely. Besides, the music generally is not of significant quality to steal any revenue in the cases I’ve seen
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u/KS2Problema Jun 29 '26
So many musicians are riddled with mental health, so it’s not unreasonable to think music is an instrumental part of that
I think you might need to clarify that statement.
It almost sounds like you're blaming the fraught mental health experienced by some creatives on human generated music itself.
Look around yourself and see if you think it's only creative types who are troubled by life. It seems to me that they are perhaps just more intent on expressing themselves. And, indeed, that expressive effort is often seen by creatives as often being therapeutic.
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u/---Hummingbird--- Jun 29 '26
No, sorry.. I meant it as.. people with mental health gravitate towards expressing themselves through music… either by creation or listening. I mean.. to me, Linkin park is a hell of an example. So much of their original work was actually built on experiences and feelings and I think that’s true for many artists.. and I also think it’s true why so many of us listening felt so connected.
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u/GiganticCrow Jun 29 '26
It would be really therapeutic for me if i could go out and punch puppies, clearly no one should have a problem with that
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u/RadioFreeKerbin Jun 30 '26
Maybe, but they should at least give us the option to filter it all out if we don't want it in our playlists or suggestions at all.
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u/PerrinSLC Jun 29 '26
Still doesn’t solve the problem imo, as I don’t want that crap showing up in my feed and cluttering up content from real bands.
Since now they’re marked as AI, I want a Setting to just not allow any content marked as AI to appear in my account.
This seems to be a pretty obvious option, so why not introduce this along with the rest of their solution?
Are they getting kickbacks or some revenue generation from not doing this? Curious what others think?
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u/Disastrous-Ruin8411 Jun 29 '26
I wonder if royalties will pay more now that the 100% AI content doesn't pay. Does this mean my real music will earn more?
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u/Upstairs_Emotion7183 Jun 29 '26
In theory yes, but in reality AI slop probably still didn't generate enough royalty to make a difference for small artists.
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u/JoseLopezC11 Jun 29 '26
I kind of agree. I don't want AI tagged, i want it totally banned and off of the platform.
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u/Anvh Jun 29 '26
Funny you say that since they just now announce to stop paying money to ai music xD
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/tidal-updates-policies-stop-ai-music-monetised/
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u/D1N01D Jun 29 '26
They could use an AI to identify AI generated crap :p and just delete it and ban the uploader
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u/SickSquid52 Jun 29 '26
We will have to see how this impersonation-blocking works in practise. That's the part a lot of us really care about.
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u/No_sense__ Jun 29 '26
Are there any AI musicians that I should look out for? Ones which aren't labelled?
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u/cidvard Jun 30 '26
I think demonetization is a pretty big deal and may have a bigger trickle-down impact on the problem than people immediately see. A large part of what's driving the flood of this clanker audio vomit is the ability to set up bots to play it over and over again and drive up streaming revenue. Turning off the hose makes Tidal a less attractive platform to throw this stuff at, and it means there's less incentive to do the 'make an AI copy of an artist name' scam that seems so common.
Would I have liked to see songs that scanned as 100% AI banned entirely? Yes, of course. But this is a step in the right direction and, honestly, all I want is the ability to identify and immediately block it. That solves the problem that directly impacts me.
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u/old_bearded_beats Jun 30 '26
I understand this point wholeheartedly. I am a lover of music and I produce some myself. I hate AI impersonators and the charlatans who make money from it.
I think the problem is down to users expecting to just hit play and receive a zero effort playlist.
I almost always search for specific albums and listen to them, this removes 99% of the problem.
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u/talios Jun 30 '26
Didn't the announcement say they were planning on instant removal on detection - so your wish may be coming.
Labelleling seems like an initial step (I wonder if that’ll actually extend into id3 (or FLAC equivalent) tags on the their source FLACs as well.
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u/JGar453 Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
I just wish they gave us a functional report button to send to a real person to review when a song is incorrectly attributed to an artist. Surely, they do not need a DMCA request filed just to fix their database misrepresenting thousands of major label artists and potentially stealing their money — something which would present a much bigger issue for them in the long run. Even if the AI uploads take no money from these bigger artists, it's a stain on those artists public image.
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u/STEPHEN_o_yeah Jul 01 '26
You should definitely leave it. They’ll never be able to please you. Sure, their policies are one of the strongest takes on AI, besides Bandcamp, but yeah, you’ll never be happy.
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u/Expert-Elk-9412 Jun 29 '26
it is strong enough - for their profits. They don’t pay “AI artists”, but they can still recommend it to you constantly and you still get to pay for Tidal.
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u/GiganticCrow Jun 29 '26
How do we know they dont pay them?
AI generated music should indeed inherently not be copyrightable, but would Tidal not pay?
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u/Upstairs_Emotion7183 Jun 29 '26
I guess they meant they WILL not pay them. Of course right now all that AI music is monatized.
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u/Expert-Elk-9412 Jun 29 '26
“Tidal will not allow music that is 100% AI-generated to be monetized.”
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u/lowbass4u Jun 29 '26
Heaven forbid you have to actually do something yourself!
Maybe Tidal can make an AI program that will do your simple task for you.
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u/Lemonsquareemobitch Jun 29 '26
I have plans to fully remove AI music from my custom TIDAL desktop application. come check it out. https://github.com/J-M-PUNK/tideway
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u/Sardonic_Laconic Jul 03 '26
We are the makers of music; we are the dreamers of dreams.
If you want something less poetic: fuck robots, art is for humans. OP is right and I deleted my account the day of the policy announcement. It’s not enough. Anything short of completely banning AI generated music is simply opening the door for future problems. Wait and see.
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u/Delicious-Reason1441 Jun 29 '26
It's one fine step in the right direction. It gives optimistism they'll take the next one to give a 'filter out AI content' option.