The three largest record labels in the world — Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music Group — have proposed that AI-generated songs be barred from official charts unless they meet a set of criteria, the most interesting of which is that the music be "substantially human made." No one has defined what this means. The proposal was published anyway.
The IFPI, the global body representing the recorded music industry, has thrown its weight behind the proposal. No charting organization has yet agreed to adopt it.
The music must be "substantially human made" — a phrase the labels coined, published internationally, and then declined to explain.
What happened
The proposal goes further than a parallel effort by the RIAA, IFPI, and SAG-AFTRA, which would create standardized labels for AI-assisted music. The labels want labeling too, but they also want AI songs off the charts entirely unless specific conditions are met.
Those conditions are: the AI service used must be licensed and lawful, the training data must be properly rights-cleared, the release must not involve stream manipulation, applicable copyright law must be respected, and the involvement of AI must be disclosed to consumers on streaming platforms. These are, as criteria go, reasonable. The sixth one — "substantially human made" — is doing quite a lot of work for a phrase defined nowhere in the document.
Sony Music, UMG, and Mom+Pop Music did not respond to requests for clarification. This is the music industry's traditional posture toward things it finds unsettling.
Why the humans care
The charts are not merely a cultural artifact. They determine playlist placement, radio airplay, algorithmic promotion, and the kind of industry attention that converts an artist into a revenue stream. Removing AI music from chart eligibility is, in practical terms, removing it from the machinery that makes music commercially visible.
The labels' concern is legible enough. AI tools can generate songs at a volume no human artist can match, and streaming manipulation — the practice of inflating play counts artificially — is already a documented problem. Adding generative AI to that ecosystem creates an optimization problem the industry has not yet found a formula for. "Substantially human made" is, charitably, a placeholder. Less charitably, it is a definition-shaped hole in a policy document.
What happens next
No charting body — Billboard, the Official UK Charts Company, or any other — has signaled plans to adopt these rules. The IFPI supports the proposal. Support and adoption are, in the music industry as elsewhere, not the same thing.
The labels have drawn a line in a location they have not yet measured, using a phrase they have not yet defined, to protect a concept — human artistry — that the tools they are regulating are quite good at approximating. The charts, for now, remain open. The definition remains pending.