Five Streaming Services and Their AI Music Policies
AI-generated music isn’t a fringe conversation anymore. It’s already sitting in playlists, popping up in recommendation feeds, and showing up in upload queues next to real releases from working artists. And while the tools behind it keep getting easier and cheaper, the rules around where that music can live are getting more complicated. Each platform is reacting to AI from a different angle: some are focused on stopping impersonation and spam, others are obsessed with metadata and authorship, and a few are taking a hard stance on keeping their catalogs human-made. For DJs, producers, and everyday listeners who care about where music comes from and who gets paid, these policy differences matter. Here’s how Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud, Bandcamp, and YouTube Music are handling AI music right now.
1. Spotify
Spotify is drawing a line between AI as a tool and AI as a weapon. The platform isn’t banning AI-generated tracks across the board, but it is heavily targeting the ways AI can be used to mislead listeners or siphon money away from real artists. That includes cracking down on vocal deepfakes and unauthorized voice cloning, tightening rules around impersonation, and rolling out systems to catch mass-upload spam tactics meant to game discovery and royalties. Spotify is also backing new standards for AI disclosures in credits, aiming for a world where listeners can understand how a track was made without labeling everything as either “AI” or “not AI.”
2. Apple Music
Apple Music treats the AI question as part of a bigger quality-control mission. Its guidelines are rooted in clean delivery: correct metadata, accurate contributor roles, consistent artist attribution, proper cover art, and releases that don’t look like low-effort filler. Within that framework, Apple makes it clear that AI-generated content can run into problems when it lacks clear authorship or disclosure, and it discourages repetitive uploads that try to sneak through by tweaking titles or metadata. The message is simple: if a release doesn’t feel professional, transparent, and properly credited, it’s more likely to get rejected before anyone even gets a chance to press play.
3. Bandcamp
Bandcamp is the most straightforward of the five, and easily the strictest. The platform has formally stated that music or audio generated wholly or substantially by AI is not allowed, and it reserves the right to remove content suspected of being AI-generated. It also explicitly bans using AI tools to impersonate other artists or replicate their style, tying that directly into existing rules around impersonation and intellectual property. Bandcamp’s reasoning isn’t about trends or efficiency — it’s about protecting a space that’s built on direct fan support and human authorship. If you’re an artist considering where to release, Bandcamp is signaling that it wants buyers to feel confident they’re supporting real people, not automated content farms.
4. Soundcloud
SoundCloud has ended up in a gray zone largely because of how its Terms of Service were interpreted. After backlash over language suggesting user content could potentially be used to train AI systems, SoundCloud issued a direct statement saying it has never used artist uploads to train AI models, doesn’t allow third-party scraping for that purpose, and has implemented safeguards like a “no AI” tag to block unauthorized use. At the same time, SoundCloud still supports AI inside the platform for things like recommendations, organization, and fraud detection, framing it as back-end infrastructure rather than generative creation. For creators, it’s a reminder that SoundCloud is staying open to AI in practical ways, but it’s under pressure to be extremely clear about what it will and won’t do with music uploaded by artists.
5. Youtube Music
YouTube Music sits in the “yes, but” category: yes to AI tools, but not at the expense of trust. YouTube openly promotes AI as a way to help creators work faster and expand what’s possible, while emphasizing that it still expects guardrails around realism, disclosure, and identity. The platform requires creators to disclose realistic altered or synthetic content, and may label content more visibly when it touches sensitive areas like news, health, elections, or finance. YouTube has also strengthened paths for people to request the removal of AI-generated content that simulates an identifiable person’s face or voice, and it’s building detection tools through Content ID for synthetic or simulated singing voices. In practice, YouTube isn’t trying to keep AI music out — it’s trying to make sure people can’t use AI to pass off fake performances as real ones without consequences.
