Qobuz Says AI Music Is a Fraction of Streams as Spotify Hands Meta Muse the Aux

Qobuz's new tags go further than Spotify's opt-in AI persona label, TechRadar reported, because they can highlight AI-generated tracks attributed to real artists. TechRadar suggested the tag could appear on Dr. Dre's new music, for example. Qobuz Managing Director Dan Mackta previously refused to call AI-generated music music at all, TechRadar reported.

When Qobuz unveiled the tagging system, it also released statistics that challenge the idea that AI music is dominating listening. Only 0.38% of streams on Qobuz come from AI-generated tracks, the company said. That amounts to one AI track for every 263 streams. More than a third of all AI albums receive not a single listen, and about four million such songs were created only to take up space and have been removed from Qobuz's library. Qobuz also said 60% of all AI music is demonetized by its anti-fraud systems, under an AI Charter it unveiled in February that detects AI music created solely for financial gain.

Qobuz is not alone among streaming services in taking a hard line. Deezer and Tidal have also introduced anti-AI measures, TechRadar reported, with Tidal giving no royalties to AI music and Deezer adding a filter to remove AI tracks. The services have identified sentiment toward AI slop as overwhelmingly negative, according to the report. Spotify is the major outlier: it has made small steps to combat AI music but has also moved in the opposite direction by partnering with Meta's Muse.

According to Android Authority, Spotify is the first major music-streaming service to join Meta Muse, which already connects with a growing list of third-party apps and services. Meta's Muse arrived two weeks ago as a personal AI agent that can work across email, calendars, payments, health apps and shopping, and Meta is also bringing it to its smart glasses. The Spotify integration lets the agent do more than press play. Once users connect Spotify to Muse, they can ask the agent to play music, podcasts or audiobooks; save tracks to their library; find something new; and build or edit playlists through conversation. Muse can also use context from calendars and schedules to automatically start the right music or podcast at the right time, and it can create Spotify's Personal Podcasts from notes and briefings.

TechRadar noted that media coverage of AI-made music often presents it as a success story, with reports on artists including Velvet Sundown, Breaking Rust and Enlly Blue mentioning high stream numbers and large estimated revenues. Qobuz's figures suggest that the problem is sometimes with the reporting rather than with AI music being popular. The data also comes from a service that positions itself as a high-resolution music platform for connoisseurs, which may shape how much AI music its users seek out.