Apple is asking artists and record labels on its music streaming platform to voluntarily label songs that were made using AI. The new “Transparency Tags” metadata system for Apple Music was announced in a newsletter to industry partners yesterday, according to Music Business Worldwide, and covers four categories, including track, composition, artwork, and music videos.
The track tag should be applied when “a material portion of a sound recording” has been generated by AI tools, while the composition tag covers other AI-generated compositional elements, such as song lyrics. The artwork tag applies to static or moving graphics, but only at the album level. For all other AI-generated visual content — whether standalone or bundled with albums — the music video tag should be applied. Multiple transparency tags can be used simultaneously for works that require more than one of these disclosures.
In its newsletter, Apple says its new tags are a “concrete first step” toward achieving industry-wide transparency around AI-generated music, and that labels and distributors “must take an active role in reporting when the content they deliver is created using AI.”
Apple Music’s tagging system follows other efforts from competing music streaming providers to protect authentic artists from spam and impersonation, and help make AI-generated music easier for users to identify. Spotify is developing a new metadata standard for AI music disclosures with DDEX — a music standards-setting organization that currently lists senior Apple Music exec Nick Williamson as a board member. Deezer also made the AI music detection tool it launched last year available to other platforms in January, while Qobuz introduced its own proprietary AI detection system last week.
In contrast to Deezer and Qobuz’s proactive detection systems, Apple Music’s Transparency Tags are entirely optional (for now) and place the responsibility for AI disclosure squarely on record labels and music distributors instead of the platform. Apple even says that determining what qualifies as AI-generated music and visuals will be left to the discretion of content providers, “similar to genres, credits, and other metadata,” and that no AI usage will be assumed on works that providers haven’t tagged.
Honesty policies for other AI labelling solutions haven’t worked out so far. Given the lack of enforcement surrounding Apple Music’s tagging system, I’m struggling to see why creators and record labels would be motivated to actually use it.