Apple Music won't prevent you from streaming AI slop, but it'll at least let you know that you're streaming AI slop. According to the Music Business Worldwide newsletter, the biggest non-Spotify streaming service is launching a new feature that it calls Transparency Tags. It's a set of metadata disclosure requirements that'll flag music that used generative AI on a "material portion" of four elements: the track itself, the lyrics, the artwork, and the music video.
In a newsletter distributed to its music industry partners, Apple Music reportedly says that Transparency Tags will function "similar to genres, credits, and other metadata." (That metadata, just anecdotally, can be hard to find on Apple Music, which doesn't make song credits as easy to locate as competitors like Spotify and Tidal do.)
Apple calls Transparency Tags "a concrete first step toward the transparency necessary for the industry to establish best practices and policies that work for everyone" with regard to AI. The company's newsletter also says, "Proper tagging of content is the first step in giving the music industry the data and tools needed to develop thoughtful policies around AI, and we believe labels and distributors must take an active role in reporting when the content they deliver is created using AI."
Unlike the streaming service Deezer, Apple Music is not developing its own system to detect AI. Instead, the company has placed the burden on labels and distributors, asking them to include that information in all metadata going forward. Labels can also begin applying those tags to music that's already out, but that doesn't appear to be required.
The Transparency Tag system appears to be optional for now. Labels don't have to supply any metadata for music that appears on Apple Music, and that will extend to AI transparency, too. In its newsletter, Apple says, "If [AI disclosure is] omitted, none is assumed." This step is significantly less strict that something like Bandcamp's outright ban of AI music, but it's a step.
