IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) began applying new chart eligibility principles on July 30 across official charts it manages in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia, and started work with national groups to extend them to about twenty more markets.
Under the rules, a recording made with generative AI qualifies only if the AI service was authorized and lawful, the track is “substantially human made,” and there are no stream or chart manipulation concerns. Eleven record companies, including the three majors, had put those principles forward the day before.
A label system that stops at the recording
Twenty days earlier, on July 10, eight organizations covering most of the recorded music business proposed the label framework the new rules lean on.
- AI: a track whose lead vocal, key instrumental, or entirety came from a model
- ai: a human-performed record where a model touched some expressive element
The July 10 announcement ends with one sentence: the system “does not cover the use of generative AI in lyrics, composition, music videos, or cover art at this point.” That places the entire songwriting stage out of scope in a single clause.
Apple Music shipped transparency tags in March with four categories: track, composition, artwork, and music video. The composition tag covers AI-generated compositional elements, including lyrics. A major DSP (digital service provider) built that field four months before the industry settled on a standard that leaves it out. Given a choice of where to harmonize, the business harmonized to the narrower option.
Why composition was left out
There is a practical reason. A performance leaves an acoustic fingerprint. Deezer built a detector for it, and Billboard uses that detector to identify AI tracks on its charts. Composition leaves nothing comparable. There is no spectral signature for a chord progression, and no forensic test that separates a model’s second verse from one written at a kitchen table at two in the morning. The industry standardized the part that can be checked.
The difficulty is that “substantially human made” is now a chart rule, and the question it asks lands squarely in the part nobody can check.
Sweden tests the gap
January showed what that looks like in practice. IFPI Sweden barred the AI-artist Jacub‘s “Jag vet, du ar inte min” from Sverigetopplistan on the grounds that it was mainly AI-generated.
The team behind the track did not argue about the recording. Their defense was pitched at the writing. That is the claim chart compilers now have to accept or reject case by case, with no label, no detector, and no agreed definition to work from.
Registration rules set a different threshold
Meanwhile, a working rule already exists at the composition stage, and it is not a sticker. ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.), and SOCAN (Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada) went to the market together and told writers not to register fully AI works, while partial ones are fine. That line sits at 100 percent. The recording side’s line sits at “substantially human.” Two thresholds, two systems, nobody reconciling them, and the one with money attached is the registration.
For anyone writing with these tools, the first disclosure question is not which sticker the track ends up carrying. It is what goes on the registration, and whether every co-writer in the room would describe the session the same way.
Listeners are already sorting themselves
Luminate‘s July study found 38% of Americans less interested in music made with generative AI against 28% more interested. They will start asking. The labels will tell them who sang it. Nothing in the July frameworks tells them who wrote it, and “at this point” is the industry conceding that this was a decision rather than a limit.
