Over 50% of new songs uploaded are now AI-made(!); Lorde bashes Meta and Spotify; Why is Keith Richards in Roblox?; Is the Michael Jackson movie Bad or a Thriller?

0:03Hello there, welcome to the price of music brought to you by Music Ally. If you want an easy guide to what's going on in the music industry and how it all works, then here we are looking at the finances of the music biz whilst also bringing you stories and comments the pop business in the last week. He's Stuart Dredge. I'm Joe Sparrow. Let's dive straight into Stu's big number, which is a big number that caught our eye this week. Stu, what is it this week?

0:26Stu:Yeah, I'm going back to the biggest of big numbers. Good. Bigly numbers. 1.124 billion, which has rather one too many things off decimal point than I like in a billion. But this is how many streams the biggest song of 2026 so far has globally. What is this song? Well, if you're a parent, as you are, the parents will know it well. It's Golden from K-pop Demon Hunters, the Netflix show, which came out in July last year. So it's the biggest song of the first half of this year, but it came out a year ago. So presumably it's been the biggest song for 18 months now. Now, remarkably, I've not heard this song.

1:07I don't think my child is old. You've got a daughter. I know. What's going on? She's protected from the internet. So I went and listened to this Golden song. and I mean to my old ears it just sounds like a generic pop song to be honest

1:23Stu:I think it's good I think you know K-Bot Doomhunters I think everything about it makes people who don't know it raise their eyebrows and go ugh but the music they've done a good job with the music they've got some proper songwriters in some good singers and the music is it's like it's frozen level catchy earworm music for kids to sing I think yes the quality is definitely there isn't it it just I mean And I could see that from my very brief interaction with the K-pop Demon Hunters franchise, I can see how it would appeal to that same audience who loved Frozen and the music and everything like that.

1:57So, well done. Do you know the interesting thing?

1:59Stu:So, this is from Luminate's mid-year report. I should say the source, really, shouldn't I? So, the big research company did their mid-year report and they had this chart of the top songs of the year so far by streams globally. So, Golden was top. It was only about 9 million streams ahead of Taylor Swift's The Fate of Ophelia, which was also last year, Jack. And only two of the top 10 tracks came out this year, and both of those have a K-pop angle. So there's one BTS song, and there's also... Do you know Tame Impala's Dracula? They did a remix with Jenny out of Blackpink. That's the other one. So it's interesting.

2:31Stu:It seems whether you're a long evergreen hit or whether you're a new one, you need a K-pop star or K-pop angle. I mean, the things with K-pop fans is that they are... How can I put this kindly? They're very focused on that niche, and they really ring it dry, don't they? They really love that genre of music. They love everything about it and they will play it over and over and over again. So, you know, you and I, Stu, have been around the block a few times and you sort of wonder when it's going to all stop. You know, the K-pop at some point will lose its luster and people will move on to something else, but it doesn't look like it's happening any time.

3:05I will evolve, I suppose.

3:06Stu:I mean, actually, seeing Jenny collaborate with Tame Impala, that's an interesting thing because she's moving out of K-pop into, what do you call Tame Impala? A sort of whimsical dream Australian pop made by a man in a T-shirt. I think they've carved out their own niche, haven't they? Well, let's see. Maybe that is the first rant leaving the sinking ship. You heard it here first, folks. Let's go on to the big stories this week. We've sort of intimated that this is coming for the last, I don't know, year. But now, half of all new music being uploaded to streaming services is now AI-generated. That's over 50 % of all the music being dumped onto DSPs every week is AI generated.

3:54But the music industry has, well, that's one thing to discuss on its own. But the music industry also has a new plan to respond to it. And it involves, wait for it, labels. But not the record kind of labels. Stu, let's start with this 50 % figure. How do you feel?

4:08Stu:Yeah, I mean, we saw it coming, didn't we? But yeah, this is from Deezer, which has made a habit of announcing its stats regularly. And yeah, it's more than half music is thinking. And this is like 90 ,000 tracks every single day on average uploaded to Deezer are AI generated. And then around 90 ,000 human-made tracks. And that's gone, I mean, the start of last year, 2025, it was 10 ,000 tracks a day were AI generated. So it's gone up ninefold in a year and a half, which kind of mirrors the rise of AI as a topic. Which makes sense, doesn't it? Because there's so many great AI-generated tracks out there.

4:43Well, this is the thing.

4:47Stu:So this has been growing fast, like the percentage of Deezer's uploads. And by the way, Deezer's saying this, it's kind of saying it's true for all streaming services, like the same as all of your Spotify and so on. So although it's been climbing, so I think it was like 10 % and 10 ,000 tracks a day a year and a half ago, but actually the amount of streams it's getting, so the share of Deezer's total streams, isn't growing. It's like between 1 % and 3%, and 85 % of those streams are fraudulent. It's people using AI music to make a dishonest buck. So the more AI music is uploaded, it's not meaning that it's being listened to more, even collectively.

5:22Stu:I mean, we discuss this a lot, right? The thing I still can't understand is why are the DSPs allowing just these tracks to be just dumped onto their servers, right? Because if they're getting this much more music, they're obviously having to have 30 % more servers or 40 % more server space. that's increasing and you know that is not expensive that is expensive as we've seen you know from the rise of AI and if 85 % of it is fraudulent what's the point I just don't understand well this is the change actually these were announced another thing this morning which is that they're going to start they're going to remove anything that's fraudulent which I think everyone does Spotify does that but they're also if an AI music track hasn't been played for six months at all but zero plays they're going to kick it off and that's the first time I think a streaming service has said yeah we're going to kick off the stuff that no one is listening to as well as the stuff that's fraudulent so all the bots need to do now is secure one play for their AI track and it stays there is that what you're saying well do you know I've got this thing because a few years ago I released two albums of AI music right in the early days when I was testing out I think it was Boomy it was called which is a long history since and I remember thinking and it was saying yeah you can release it on Spotify and I was like can you can't surely you can't so I did it to check it out.

6:40Stu:So I have two albums that I've never been fraudulent with, but equally no one is listening to them. Well, I was about to say, you haven't bought your yacht that's moored in Ibiza town yet. I've not even bought a paper boat. No. Before we get into this labeling thing, riddle me this, Stu. I remember back in the pre-AI days, AI music days, that we sort of hit these landmarks of uploads per day, and we were getting closer to 100 ,000 a day, and then we got 100 ,000 songs a day, now it's 120 ,000 songs being uploaded a day. But now you're saying 50 % of the music being uploaded every day is AI, and that's about 90 ,000 tracks.

7:19Stu:Yes. So that implies that 90 ,000 tracks are human. So where's that 30 ,000 tracks gone? Yeah, well, I think so. Part of it, I think, was AI was starting to come in around then, and no one's counting it. Okay. So, but yeah, I mean, there is maybe a small fall in the amount of human music. Which, to be honest, 90 ,000 tracks a day of human music is still too much music. I mean, of course, that isn't new music being made every week, is it? That's the dumping old catalog music on there. It's all kinds of stuff, yeah. And all sorts of records. So I don't think we're quite yet at the stage where humans are giving up.

7:53Stu:And so there's less humans. But it is, I mean, it's an absurd amount of music. Like, you know, to listen to all of this would take you so long. But it is. So I think the fact that Disa's now saying, we don't want to have it dogging up our servers if no one's listening to it, get off. that would be interesting because that is something that I think the music industry would quite like Spotify and Apple and everyone else to do and like you say there's kind of no it's a benefit for them too I'm sure Apple can afford server space but it's still a cost tell us about this labeling which is like tagging isn't it so what is this labeling thing they're talking about yeah so this was announced in fact while you were on your holidays yes you went away and all these big things got announced you're welcome was that planned yes I coordinated with the industry so this has been going for a while this idea that actually if you're a listener if you're listening to Spotify or Apple Music or so on you should be able to know if something you listen to is AI generated and this came remember when the first wave of things like the Velvet Sundown last year, the kind of fake band and it didn't say this is AI and some people thought it was real so that's been going for a while saying okay this should be labeled and Deezer does that, Deezer tags things as this is AI generated music and Spotify and Apple started doing that too.

9:06Stu:So the music industry has now come together and said, actually, we think there should be a standard system of labels, a bit like the explicit content badge that you get. Like a standard that everyone understands saying, this is AI. And it's actually, it's two labels. And I'll describe them, because this is a brilliant podcast format. One of them says AI in white capital letters inside a black box. That means a song was either entirely AI generated or the lead vocals are AI or a key instrumental performer. It's an AI-made track. A main part of it is AI. So capital letters, white, black box. Lowercase, AI, in black text, in a white box, positioned near the bottom in a way that makes my teeth itch because I like things to be centered vertically and horizontally.

9:57Stu:Let's go with it. So small, small, that means the song was AI-assisted. So it's a human track, a human made it, But they used AI somewhere in the process. Maybe they used it for the drums, for mastering. So it's like a small lowercase AI. It's not AI generated. It's just, you know. That's a bit like an artist using a synthesizer. You know, they've used it as a tool to make something themselves. But it's a human endeavor. And so the idea is, this came from the US labels by the RIA, global labels by the IFPI, and a bunch of other industry bodies. So it's come from the organizations of the music industry.

10:31Stu:It's not come from the record labels, although those bodies represent them, but it's also not come from the streaming services. And there were no streaming services involved in the announcement. It came entirely from the industry. And that's kind of the key point because these labels only work if everyone says, yes, we'll use them. Spotify will use them, Apple will use them. And the problem is that quite a few of them have got their own systems already. So Spotify's been working on a system that involves you being able to say as an artist, we used AI for the mastering or for this or that. And then it will show that in its metadata.

11:02Stu:Right, right, right. So this is the kind of challenge. This has been announced. These two badges have been shown off. But no streaming service has yet said, yes, we'll adopt this and we'll do it this time. So for now, it's kind of a notional system that isn't actually being used yet. Lovely. The exact kind of fudging that the music industry is famous for. I tell you what, I'm going to project into the future a bit here. What I'm starting to, the vision I'm starting to have, having looked at a lot of different tech platforms and AI and things like that, is that we're going to start to have a sort of tiering of streaming platforms where you pay for the full pro service where you can listen to everything and you get enhanced features.

11:46You get a sort of a cheaper version where you get less features and maybe some adverts. You get a free or slightly cheaper paid version with more adverts. And then you get a totally free service that has only AI music on it and you can do what you want with it. And I can sort of see that some people and businesses would go for the completely free AI generated one to sort of play in the background, you know, in their shops and whatever, or people who don't care about music and they just want something to listen to while they're vibe coding their latest app or whatever. I don't know. It sort of, it feels like there's a sort of marginal audience for all this AI rubbish and people will listen to it.

12:26And while we're on AI music, while you and I were away in our static caravan in Rill, a story broke about Suno, which is the biggest AI-making music service, and what it trains its models on. And this is something else that we have speculated about. So what has happened, and what do they train the models on, Stu?

12:45Stu:Can anyone guess? Yeah, well, it's just on me playing guitar, it turns out. They were just listening all the time. So this is an ongoing debate. what was it trained on? And this has a very illegal implication because two major labels of suing, and they're trying to get it to say what it trained its model on. And they've been actually trying to find that out. That's part of the whole process. So this came from a technical news site called 404 Media. Which is very good, by the way. It's worth subscribing and reading to this. This is a really good research and journalistic research-based website.

13:21Stu:Yeah, and it was based on, which is where it's just slightly kind of, I'm uncomfortable with it. It's based on data from a hacker who basically breached Suno's security and then shared the details with the bot. And there's a whole debate about, do you run stories based on hacked information and so on? But this looks like a smoking gun because basically, I think it's source code from Suno in 2023 and 2024. And there's comments in the source code alluding to YouTube Music and Deezer and Genius, the Lyric's database, and then Freesound and Jumendo, which are two public music catalogs. so it kind of is essentially saying yeah this is probably trading because we wrote it in our code yeah which is not really a surprise I would say a lot of the music industry assumed that Suno was trained on music from YouTube because pretty much everyone seems to have trained AI on music from YouTube including YouTube yeah Deezer was a surprise and they won't be happy about this I don't think and then Genius's lyrics and Jomendo which is one of these music catalogs it's already suing Suno saying we think you trained in our music right So in a way, this kind of confirms what's already thought.

14:27Stu:Should I do the legal bit? Yeah, please. So Suno has said its models have been, quote, trained on publicly available music files and relatable metadata, which I think means related to that rather than relatable. Yeah, yeah, yeah, really. It just speaks to me. Really feeling it, yeah. Accessible on third-party websites on the open internet. Wait a minute. So this is like me saying, I'm stream ripping from... So you can easily go to YouTube, which is publicly available. It's a front-facing website. And you can listen to music, and it's free. And if you install an extension to your Chrome browser, or you just go to another website, you can paste in the link to that song, and that website will rip the song and dump it in your downloads folder.

15:12If I tried to say, oh, by the way, Universal Music, I've ripped a whole bunch of your songs from YouTube, and now I just listen to them without you getting paid anything, that wouldn't fly, would it?

15:25Stu:Well, there is this strain of thought, isn't it? If it's on the internet, it's fair game. Which, and the whole argument around these models is, well, hang on a minute, this is the cost of your business. You need to train it on music, so you should be paying us for the music. And you make money and we have money and so on. So, yeah, it's kind of, it's, I mean, lawyers can have their say on whether this is a defensible. Please do, folks. Please, if you are a lawyer and listening, I'd love to hear what you think. But I think the key point here is that two major labels are still suing Suno. They've been trying to get it to cough up and mention what it trained on.

15:57Stu:So this report may end up filtering into their next moves legally. Or, and here's another theory, this coming out does look like a smoking gun. You know, if it smells like a smoking gun, if it looks like a smoking gun, that may actually nudge everyone towards a settlement. Suno may say, okay, we need to settle this now. Oh, that's close. Oh, you mean, did we frame our model on music from the internet? Yes, yes, we did do that. So there's an argument here. This could be bad news for sooner legally, but I suspect it may just be another nudge towards whatever the settlement is, and it maybe gives the labels a bit more leverage at the negotiating table.

16:39Almost certainly. Now, let's get away from AI. The latest startup hoping to help artists make money directly from their biggest fans is, well, help me out here. So is it Loom or Loome? I think it's Loom. Loom. Okay, but that's L-U-M-E. It's got the backing of Lord and a bunch of cool Kiwi artists. But is it the next big thing? And this is another one of those things we've been talking about a lot recently, which is these slightly smaller platforms that have the backing of big artists and they're doing cool things to try and generate new income streams. We've been looking for this for a while, haven't we?

17:12Yeah, and this is a fun story

17:13Stu:because when we originally wrote about it, you know sometimes my source something is a press release sometimes my source is someone's written a story yeah my source for this was Lord actual Lord right who dumped a load of demos from her last album online for fans and in this post she said oh by the way I'm going to put them up on this new thing my mates are doing called Loom which obviously made me go off and try and find it I found it wrote a piece and then their CEO got in touch and said yeah we're launching can we tell you more about it and it's live so Loom is an app it's a mobile app you can download it and it sells you digital albums Essentially, it sells you the music, but also extra stuff.

17:48Stu:So demos, extra tracks, behind-the-scenes video, photos, voice notes from the artist, essays. It's kind of like a digital box set, is how they describe it. Which is a thing that's been tried before. Apple tried this a long time ago. And you'll pay roughly around the price of a standard CD. So like 13 quid-ish, they reckon, is a sweet spot for this. And it's from New Zealand. so it's starting entirely with a bunch of independent New Zealand artists who will include Lord, she's going to put her stuff on it later this year I think but they're going to open up to others around the world but for the moment it's kind of starting with local artists but you can get the app around the world and buy the albums but for now the artists are from New Zealand and they get to keep 80 % of their sales so when you buy an album for an artist there they give and we did an interview with the CEO and he was saying that this came from them feeling that people aren't listening to albums as much.

18:43Stu:Like streaming is directing you towards listening to tracks. But artists still love making albums. And they also thought that a lot of the hype around super fans and super fan apps seems about rinsing people's walls. How much are they taking for? And this is all driven by, well, actually, how can we get artists to do something really nice that fans will love, fair price, and share the money fairly? So it seems to be coming from a nice place. Yeah, I mean, it is like you say, it's about addressing the sort of nice desires of super fans, which is, you know, like if you go to the shop in the old days and you had two versions of the CD, you have the standard CD, and you have this one which comes with some stickers and maybe an extra booklet, and it's in a cardboard box that folds out, you know, the fans of the band would spend the extra four pounds and get that one, right?

19:32And it sort of seems, I did that, you did that, and it feels like it's sort of scratching that itch, and it's not saying, right, now go and buy five versions of the album and let's clear you out for the month. But just buy this little bit more. And, you know, it seems like a good deal for everybody. It's reminiscent of Cantilever, which we spoke about a few weeks ago, which is that UK-based, was it Cantilever, the UK-based startup that has all the indie label backing? Yes. Except you get sort of third-party articles written about 10 albums a month. Yeah. So it's sort of in that same area, isn't it?

20:03Stu:So I mentioned Luminate and their mid-year report earlier on. I mean, one of the other things they found was they were like a lot of people in Gen Z are buying CD albums now. That's a thing that's happening, a trend. But around half of them don't own a CD player. Wow. And this is partly about collecting something. CDs are collectible. That's the thing. But it's also about here's a way to put money in the pocket of the artist you like. Yeah. So I think Loom is also tapping into that idea of like, you like this artist, you could go and stream their album over here. But here is a way to pay them some money, get some extra stuff.

20:34Stu:But it's really about supporting them. So I think, and so it sounds, it sounds like it's from the right, coming from the right place. Lord's invested in it. It's got some good, and it's got the guy who co-founded Substack is also an investor. Interesting. And they talked, alluded to sort of doing more stuff in a few, at the moment it's selling you albums, but I think they want to do more stuff around community. Okay. Like letting artists, but there's two things basically it lives or dies on. So first is, well no, three actually. Three, three Spanish Inquisition things. First, does it attract good artists?

21:04Stu:It has to attract good artists. So some of these things have launched and just no one, no interesting artists join them. So they die. So that's one thing. It needs to make sure it gets some really interesting, good artists popular. Two, can they bring their fan bases with them to the app? So can they, because that's your marketing really. And third, do fans actually want to pay for digital albums within an app? And of course, one thing here is that these albums live within the app. And if the app suddenly goes bust, what happens? Do you not have access to that stuff anymore? that's one concern I think when it's a startup yeah and I think that there's another way of looking at this or another way of delivering this sort of stuff to fans which is those there's a bunch of companies which you can buy a t-shirt at a gig and it has an embedded NFC code and you tap it and it downloads an album to your phone and it counts as a chart eligible thing so you get the album as a bunch of files on your phone that's not going anywhere it counts as a chart placement makes you feel good and you get a tote bag or a t-shirt or a button badge or whatever.

22:05So that one feels like the sort of real-world version of this, doesn't it? So there's a few options now for people depending on what they want. Put money into the pocket of the artist you like and get something in return that you like that doesn't feel like you're being rinsed. What a revolutionary business model that is. Any other business? So not content with investing in hot new music startups, Lorde has also been giving a right. Royals bashing. That's a pun. Thank you, Stu. to Meta and Spotify this month. Now, Meta and Spotify are used to getting a good old kicking, but why has Lorde been doing it?

22:41Stu:Well, she's newly independent. She came to the end of a major label. And I think, like James Blake, she's quite enjoying... I mean, I don't think she's ever been that resistant, speaking of mine. I think she's enjoying that fact that she can say whatever she wants about anything, and there's no label going. She shouldn't have said that. So, at first, she was playing this festival in Madrid sponsored by Ray-Ban, who are Meta's partner making its AI smart spectacle sunglasses business. And she basically came up and said on stage, you don't know if someone's wearing sunglasses or if they're wearing those fucked up fucking, can I just say for the record, fuck the glasses.