On July 15, eight days from Tuesday, Tidal's new AI music policy becomes operational infrastructure. Every fully AI-generated track on the service will carry an "AI" badge and will no longer generate royalties or qualify for direct-to-fan sales. [1] The policy also covers Tidal Upload, the platform's independent artist distribution arm. Music that uses AI as a tool alongside human creative work is explicitly left alone.

This paper reported on July 2 how the American Federation of Musicians recast AI-music licensing as a collective bargaining and labor-law fight, filing against major labels — the first time the argument moved from artistic concern to union grievance with a legal instrument. Today's story is the first time a streaming platform converted that labor argument into revenue-distribution infrastructure.

The platform split is the mechanism. Tidal and Deezer deny royalties to fully AI-generated tracks. Spotify and Apple Music apply labels and filtering but continue paying. [2] That means an AI-music producer distributing to all four platforms will, starting July 15, collect royalties from two and nothing from two — a bifurcation that will grow as the July 15 date passes and the reporting numbers start to accumulate.

Tidal described the volume driver plainly: "an overwhelming amount of AI-generated music from 3rd party distributors." [3] The policy is not aimed at experimental or hybrid AI-assisted work by established artists. It is aimed at the automated track factories that have been using streaming services as distribution infrastructure since text-to-music tools became commercially accessible. Tidal will hold AI-generated content to a "higher standard of content integrity" and will expand the AI tag to "substantially AI-generated" content as detection methods improve.

The AFM's ongoing labor suit against major labels has not yet cited Tidal's policy as evidence that platform-level relief is achievable. The July 15 cutoff is the first data point.

-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles