October 21, 2026

Pressure on music created with artificial intelligence has been mounting since the very first days of its existence. The most active pressure comes from the major record labels Universal, Sony Music, and Warner. If previously the problems concerned individual platforms and services, such as Suno, now track removals have affected musicians in general, including those who did not use neural networks. At the same time, YouTube Music is introducing track labeling, Deezer is preparing to hide AI content from all recommendations, and Spotify has reported removing more than 50 million questionable tracks from its recommendations.

Track Removals at Distributor DistroKid

DistroKid is one of the largest services in the West that helps independent musicians publish music on platforms. In October, a significant number of the service's users reported that their tracks were disappearing from catalogs. No notices or explanations were received.

Examples cited by musicians:

• Cover of a Stevie Wonder song. The artist claims he obtained a license for the cover and effectively bought the rights to its creation. The track was removed all the same.
• Track with a purchased beat. The beat was allegedly created using artificial intelligence. The track disappeared entirely from the catalog.
• Disputed sample. The artist released a track with a certain sample three years ago. Later, another artist released a track with the same sample, two years after the first. The rights were challenged, and the tracks were removed.

Individual tracks, albums, and entire catalogs all disappeared. Musicians state that they did not use neural networks in these cases.

Universal Music Lawsuit

On September 15, Universal Music filed a lawsuit against DistroKid. The company accuses the service of distributing content that infringes the copyrights of others, as well as low-quality content, including mass spam uploads. According to the plaintiff, such materials distributed through DistroKid cause significant damage to the music industry as a whole.

The plaintiff demands that DistroKid provide:

• data on how much content was uploaded through the service;
• the amount of royalties received for that content.

According to Universal Music, this data is needed to show in court that AI-generated music generates significant royalties. The plaintiff argues that the algorithms were trained on others' music without the authors' consent. Therefore, in its view, all income from such music is obtained illegally and takes money away from the actual rightsholders.

Lawsuit Against Suno

On October 14, Universal Music and Sony Music filed a new lawsuit against Suno. Previously, the parties reportedly were moving toward an agreement and discussing the possibility of cooperation.

The labels' position in the lawsuit:

• Suno's developers took music from world-renowned artists available in the public domain, covering various genres;
• their own models were trained on these materials, which process music and create new compositions;
• as a result, the copyrights of the authors of the works are being infringed;
• the generated music is flooding platforms and taking a share of revenue away from the actual rights holders.

The labels aim to prove in court that Suno's activities cause harm to the music industry. In essence, they present artificial intelligence not merely as a matter of infringing specific copyrights, but as a factor destroying the industry.

AI Content Labeling on Platforms

YouTube Music is introducing labeling for music and divides it into three categories. Yandex applies the same division.

The author of the article notes that the boundary of the third category may become blurred. VST plugin manufacturers are embedding artificial intelligence into all instruments. In the author's view, the category of fully human music will likely include only recordings in which a person picks up an instrument and performs the parts on the recording without processing through such instruments.

Spotify: Removing Spam and AI Personas

On October 20, Spotify reported that in 2026 it removed more than 50 million spam-related tracks from recommendations. The company says these involve low-quality content, mass uploads, tracks that resemble one another, and releases that nobody listens to or that are artificially inflated with bots to collect royalties. However, Spotify does not specify that all of these tracks were created by neural networks. Spam can also be created manually.

To identify such content, Spotify uses:

• its own tools that review the catalog;
• listening statistics, including track skips and the share of tracks listened to in full.

The "AI persona" Label

Spotify is introducing the "AI persona" label for artists who are entirely created by artificial intelligence. Such personas are also excluded from recommendations:

• a user sees the artist's updates if they find the profile manually and subscribe to it;
• if there is no subscription, the personas do not appear in automatic recommendations.

Recommendations are the main organic channel for attracting audiences for many AI artists. In addition, such artists are excluded from editorial playlists by default.

Position in Russia

Yandex, which previously took a lenient approach to AI-generated content, is also tightening its requirements for such music.

Author's Position

The author of the material believes that artificial intelligence is a powerful tool, but it must be used correctly and in combination with other tools. In his view, relying only on generation is unreasonable for a professional approach to music.