Deezer is opening its AI music detection system to other streaming services, a move that could quickly reshape how platforms police synthetic tracks, fight streaming fraud, and protect royalty pools for human artists. The company says its technology identifies fully AI-generated songs from leading models, tags them for listeners, removes them from algorithmic and editorial recommendations, and cuts them out of monetization.
Why This Matters For Streaming Platforms
AI-generated uploads have surged, and with them the incentive to game recommendation systems and siphon royalties. Deezer reports that 85% of streams from fully AI-generated tracks are fraudulent, underscoring how bots and click-farms distort charts and payouts. The platform now sees around 60,000 AI tracks submitted each day and has flagged 13.4 million songs as AI-made.
By selling its detector to rivals, Deezer is effectively offering the sector a turnkey compliance layer. Services that adopt it can apply clear labeling, suppress synthetic music from discovery surfaces, and exclude it from royalty calculations—critical steps for artist trust and for keeping catalogs usable for listeners who want authenticity.
Inside Deezer’s approach to detecting AI-made music
Deezer says the system catches output from major generative tools such as Suno and Udio. Beyond labeling, it demonetizes fully AI-generated tracks and removes them from the royalty pool, aligning with the company’s broader push toward “artist-centric” economics that curb noise, spam, and manipulation.
The company hasn’t published technical details, but industry-standard detectors typically blend audio fingerprinting with spectro-temporal analysis and pattern recognition of model artifacts. Some also examine lyric structures and metadata anomalies common in mass-generated content. While no detector is perfect, consistent policy enforcement—label, downrank, demonetize—can reduce the financial upside for bad actors.
Early interest and integration paths for streaming rivals
Deezer’s CEO says multiple companies have already tested the tool, including Sacem, the French rights society representing more than 300,000 creators and publishers. Pricing is deal-dependent, suggesting flexible offerings for large DSPs, smaller services, distributors, and even rights organizations that want to audit incoming or existing catalogs.
Adoption could happen at two choke points: pre-ingestion (screening uploads before they hit the catalog) and post-ingestion (scanning the live catalog and applying labels and monetization rules). Either route can quickly slash fraudulent plays and restore confidence in recommendation quality.
A Divided Industry Is Moving Toward Guardrails
The broader music ecosystem is split between embracing AI as a licensed creative tool and shutting out synthetic content entirely. Some platforms have banned AI-generated music; others, like Spotify, have clarified that unauthorized voice clones are prohibited and have tightened anti-spam policies. Meanwhile, major labels have struck licensing deals with AI startups to ensure training and generation happen with authorization and compensation.
Regulators and trade bodies have signaled increasing scrutiny. The Department of Justice charged a musician with using bots to stream AI-generated tracks billions of times, allegedly capturing more than $10 million in fake royalties. Groups such as IFPI and the RIAA continue to push for transparency, provenance, and stronger anti-fraud controls across the supply chain.
Detection versus watermarking as platform guardrails
Deezer’s tool addresses today’s catalogs without waiting for an industry-wide watermark. Watermarking—embedding a persistent signal into AI outputs—could be a durable layer if adopted by model providers at scale. Until then, third-party detection gives platforms a practical lever to act on synthetic uploads and enforce policy regardless of a model’s cooperation.
The likely end state is a stack: model-level watermarking, platform-level detection, clearer user disclosures, and consistent monetization rules. For artists, that means fewer bots eating the pie. For listeners, it means recommendation shelves dominated by human creativity unless they intentionally opt in to AI experiments.
The bottom line on Deezer’s AI detector for rivals
By commercializing its AI detector, Deezer has lowered the barrier for rivals to take a principled stance on synthetic music without reinventing the wheel. If widely adopted, the tool could become a de facto standard for labeling, ranking, and royalty protection—turning a chaotic wave of AI uploads into a manageable, transparent part of the streaming ecosystem.
