Australia's charts now refuse a song that is wholly or primarily generated by machine. The Australian Recording Industry Association said so on Aug. 25. The rule took effect with the chart dated Monday. [2] The fight over whether that is a ban or a label did not end when the Code of Practice changed. It moved, on Monday, into an industry roundtable and onto the Washington Post's opinion page. [1][3]

This paper's Saturday account of how the major labels' AI lawsuits multiply faster than any ruling treated compensation as a courtroom problem: who gets paid for training data. Australia has chosen a different lever. Chart eligibility is not a damages theory. It is a gate. A recording developed with generative AI may appear on the ARIA Charts only if it is "substantially human made" and raises no stream or chart manipulation concerns. [2] Wholly AI-generated tracks are out. ARIA will use the global labelling standard announced by the industry on July 10 to tell the two apart. [1][2]

The test case was already on the radio. Queensland DJ and producer Josh Fawaz's cover of Madonna's "Like a Prayer" became Australia's most-played song on radio and climbed to No. 4 on two ARIA charts in July amid questions about generative AI. Fawaz later added Spotify credits identifying AI vocals and AI drums. As of the chart dated Aug. 24, the song was still No. 4 on the Australian Singles Chart. [1] A Washington Post opinion published Monday, titled "Who's that bot? An AI cover of Madonna spurs industry changes," used the same cover as the spur. [3] Hypebot, also Monday, gathered the industry argument the ban did not close. [1]

ARIA chief executive Annabelle Herd stated the institutional line. "Artists already use AI tools in their work, the Charts can and should evolve to keep room for that, but music generated wholesale by services built on artists' recordings is a different matter." [2] A chart that "rewards unlicensed AI output," she said, "would undercut the very basis of the recorded music we exist to represent." [1][2] She asked radio, in particular, to write the same distinction into its own codes. [2]

Con Raso, co-founder of Tuned Global, answered with the disclosure brief. "There's an important distinction between music that is generated almost entirely by AI and artists using AI as part of a broader human creative process." [1] What matters, he said, is transparency: listeners, platforms, and rights holders need to know how a piece was made, who contributed, and what rights sit behind it. "Clear attribution and metadata will become increasingly important as AI-generated and AI-assisted music grows." [1] Chart eligibility, in that telling, is "only one part of a much bigger issue." [1]

Louis Rogers, writing Monday for Hypebot, reached for Milli Vanilli. Authenticity, he argued, used to be assumed because "AI slop didn't exist." [1] ARIA's line — tool versus artist — "sounds relatively straightforward." Maintaining it as the software embeds itself in writing, tracking, and distribution will not be. [1] ARIA has already said it will keep the Code under review. Ineligible recordings can be refused, removed retroactively, stripped of accreditations, and blocked from ARIA Awards. Artists may contest an exclusion. [2]

The majors, two days ago, were suing and investing at once. Australia has now told the market which songs may count as hits. The Post and the trade press are still asking whether counting was the right verb, or whether a label would have been enough. The Madonna cover, still human enough to sit at No. 4 last week, is the object they cannot stop arguing over.

-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles