// creator protection

Source: Musicbusinessworldwide

Tidal's policy draws a hard line between human-created and synthetic music at the payout layer, effectively pricing AI-generated work at zero while allowing it to exist on the platform—a practical middle ground between outright bans and the hands-off approaches of Spotify and Apple Music. The real enforcement challenge isn't detection but impersonation: removing AI tracks mimicking specific artists addresses the immediate threat to existing rights holders, but does nothing to stop indistinguishable synthetic music from flooding the catalog and degrading discovery for human creators. Streaming platforms are beginning to treat AI music as a catalog liability rather than a licensing opportunity, which could accelerate pressure on distributors and production tools to implement upstream filters before tracks even reach major services.