Why Australia’s music industry banned AI music in chart listing | Explained
The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) has said that “wholly AI-generated tracks” will not be eligible for listing on its charts, as more listeners struggle to differentiate between human and machine-made music
Australia's music industry body, the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), banned songs entirely created with AI on August 25. This decision came after an AI remix of Madonna’s 1989 song 'Like a Prayer' by Australian music producer and disc jockey Josh Fawaz gained popularity on the country’s top 20 chart, ranking second and garnering over 23 million views on YouTube.
Despite ARIA not outright banning AI in music, its updated code requires recordings using Generative AI to be "substantially human-made" and not raise "stream or chart manipulation concerns" to be eligible for listing. ARIA CEO Annabelle Herd emphasized the need for charts to remain a "transparent measurement" of music consumed in Australia while supporting artists who use AI tools.
However, this leaves room for AI-generated music, with no clear punishment for users creating AI versions of songs. Legal battles between original artists and AI music generation platforms like Suno and Udio are ongoing, with music publishers suing Anthropic and its co-founders over copyright infringement. Transparent labelling standards are crucial to distinguish AI-generated music from human-created compositions, with Spotify introducing "AI Persona" labels and not including AI-generated artists in recommendations.
Users will be able to identify if an artist disclosed their AI status or if Spotify applied the label. While Spotify provides tools to understand if tracks were created with AI, listeners are still asking for ways to filter or avoid AI-generated music entirely.
Written by urgent.news from The Hindu - Sci-Tech's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
