Apple Music As Good And Bad News About AI Music
AI Music is flooding the internet, and Apple Music is no exception. The good news is that almost no one is listening to it on the platform.
Apple Music VP Oliver Schusser says that while AI-generated music now makes up about a third of the current submissions to the music service, it accounts for less than .05% of the actual user listening.
Although Apple is being proactive about the submission problem, it certainly doesn’t seem that it has to. According to Schusser, “We have developed, and we’ve never talked about this, but we’ve developed technology in-house that would allow us to exactly see what music people are delivering us, what AI [model] it is and all that.”
The company also asks labels and distributors to disclose AI use in songs as a first line of defense. The real problem is that many may have no idea the extent of AI use in their catalogs.
Severe Financial Impact
Although AI slop is a concern, fraud is too, but Apple has noticed an improvement there too. “The good news is our fraud penalty works incredibly well. We’ve seen a 60% reduction sort of over time in fraud, just because of the penalty.”
Apple has recently doubled its fine structure for fraudulent activity. The fees levied on artists or labels caught manipulating streams now range from 10% to 50% of the royalties that would have been earned, up from the previous 5%–25% range. Beyond fines, Apple removes fraudulent streams and completely demonetizes them, often redistributing the withheld royalties back into the pool for legitimate artists.
For example, if an fraudster is caught attempting to generate $1 million in royalties via fraudulent streams, they could face up to $500,000 in penalties. The problem is that the fraudsters are still making money, so hopefully Apple will get even more severe in the future.
At least as far as Apple Music is concerned, the amount of AI-generated content that actually enters the catalog is the biggest problem. It seems that listeners have already made their choice.
