Deezer plans to license its AI-detection tool to other companies – after using it to demonetise 85% of AI music on its platform

Streaming services are under increasing pressure to clamp down on AI-generated music, with many musicians and industry professionals saying it dilutes royalty pools – meaning less money in the pockets of human artists – and muddies real human creativity.

French service Deezer has been a frontrunner in dealing with AI music – and its consequences – on its platform. As far back as 2023, the company made its intention to “detect and delete” AI-made music clear. In June last year, Deezer unveiled a new AI content tagging system which filters such content out of royalty payments and blocks it from showing up in editorial playlists. Despite this, in September, the platform revealed up to a third of music uploaded every day was fully AI-generated.

Back then, that third of uploaded music accounted for about 30,000 tracks – all AI-generated. Now, Deezer says, that figure has doubled, with around 60,000 new AI tracks uploaded to the platform every day, around 39% (per Mixmag).

But the platform’s fight against AI music continues; it says over 13.4 million AI tracks have been tagged using its system launched in June. Up to 85% of those have been marked as “fraudulent”, and subsequently “removed” from the royalty pool.

“Music generated entirely by AI has become nearly indistinguishable from human creation, and with a continuous flood of uploads to streaming platforms, our approach remains crystal clear: transparency for fans and protecting the rights of artists and songwriters,” says Deezer CEO Alexis Lanternier.

“Every fraudulent stream that we detect is demonetised so that the royalties of human artists, songwriters and other rights owners are not affected.”

Deezer is also taking things a step further, with plans to license the technology behind its AI tagging system to other brands and platforms.

“We’ve seen a great interest in both our approach and our tool, and we have already performed successful tests with industry leaders, including Sacem,” Lanternier adds. “From now on, we are licensing the tech to make it widely available.”

You can learn more about the latest findings, plus the platform’s AI tagging tool, at Deezer.

Sam is the Associate News Editor for Guitar.com and MusicTech. Thoroughly immersed in music culture for the majority of his life, Sam has played guitar for 20 years, studied music technology and production at university, and also written for the likes of MusicRadar, Guitar World, Total Guitar and Metal Hammer.