Apple Music will now let users know if they are listening to music that was made using AI.
READ MORE: In the age of AI Oasis, there’s no point being ordinary
According to Music Business Worldwide, Apple shared an update with industry partners and unveiled details of new transparency tags that will be introduced on its streaming platform.
Going forward, the tags will push for distributors to highlight when AI-generated content has been used, and it will be able to distinguish whether it was used in the music, the lyrics, the music video, or the artwork.
At the moment, the label or distributor needs to manually choose if it wants to flag when artificial intelligence has been used, however, the new newsletter from Apple suggests that it will soon be “required” when uploading new content to the streaming service.
It described the tags as a “concrete first step toward the transparency necessary for the industry to establish best practices and policies that work for everyone”.
Apple also added that it has implemented the changes because of the changing landscape of the music industry, and because it wants to “remain focused on maintaining a level and fair playing field for all creators and content providers alike.”
Apple Music introduces AI transparency tags to disclose when AI was used in artwork, tracks, compositions and music videos. pic.twitter.com/7XB5ISzjB8
— Pop Base (@PopBase) March 5, 2026
It is not clear when the transparency tags will be brought into full effect, nor what the repercussions will be for those who fail to disclose that AI has been used.
The update from Apple is shared after a study, conducted last year, revealed that 97 per cent of people “can’t tell the difference” between real and AI music. Before then, figures in 2024 warned that people working in music were likely to lose a quarter of their income to AI over the following four years.
As well as Apple, Deezer has also tackled the rise of AI-generated content – which it said in September made up 28 per cent of content on the platform – sharing that it had demonetised 85 per cent of all AI-generated tracks on its site using an AI-detection tool.
Bandcamp has banned all AI-created tracks too, saying: “We reserve the right to remove any music on suspicion of being AI-generated.”
Last year, Spotify confirmed that it was cracking down on AI as well, and removing 75million “spammy tracks” and targeting impersonators. That statement followed a report which claimed that AI-generated songs were being uploaded to dead musicians’ Spotify profiles without permission.
Paul McCartney, Kate Bush and Elton John are among the major British artists to have urged Keir Starmer to protect the work of creatives, and the Prime Minister told NME in 2025 that the government were working to “get the balance right.”
Last month, Google shared that it had given its virtual assistant Gemini the ability to create AI-generated music via its “most advanced music generation model yet”, Lyria 3.
The tech giant claimed that the new feature was “developed with input from producers and musicians”, and would allow fans to “express, explore, and experiment with high-fidelity music, using prompts to create tracks with natural flow from note to note”.
Last summer, an AI-generated ‘band’ called The Velvet Sundown made headlines after gaining around 400,000 monthly Spotify listeners – despite existing for less than a month by that point – and, at the start of 2026, a song that had earned millions of streams in Sweden was banned from music charts in the country because it was created by AI.
The post Apple Music will know let you know if you’re listening to music made with AI appeared first on NME.
