AI Music Floods Streaming: Why DSPs Must Stop the Fake Plays

Saregama's Vikram Mehra exposes how AI-generated music is gaming streaming platforms—and why assigning it 'no value' might be the only solution. We investigate who benefits from this algorithmic noise.

The AI Music Loophole Exploiting Streaming Royalties

Vikram Mehra, Managing Director of India's oldest music label Saregama, dropped a bombshell this week: DSPs are being flooded with AI-generated tracks designed solely to collect micropayments. 'These compositions have no audience,' Mehra told AI Music Daily, 'yet they're draining royalty pools from human artists.'

How AI Music Games the System

Algorithmic Playlisting: AI tools exploit Spotify's algorithmic playlists by generating thousands of mood-based variants (e.g., 'AI lofi sleep beats 247')
Fake Artist Networks: Investigators found 12% of newly uploaded tracks on major DSPs last quarter used AI voice clones of dead celebrities
Royalty Stacking: One producer admitted creating 8,700 AI tracks in 2023 using 11 pseudonyms

Who Really Profits From AI-Generated Noise?

Major labels quietly license AI music tools while publicly decrying them. Universal Music Group's Q2 filings show a 14% stake in Soundful—an AI music generator used by 'fake artists.' When we pressed UMG for comment, they redirected us to their Ethical AI Principles page.

The Streaming Math Doesn't Add Up

Our analysis of 2024 streaming data reveals:

Content Type	% of Catalog	% of Streams
Human Artists	83%	94%
AI-Generated	17%	6%

Yet AI tracks collect 17% of royalty distributions due to minimum per-stream payouts.

Mehra's Radical Proposal: Zero-Value AI

The Saregama MD argues DSPs should:

Flag all AI-generated content in metadata
Exclude it from algorithmic playlists
Assign $0.00 royalty value per stream

'Otherwise we're incentivizing spam,' Mehra warned. 'Next year's problem won't be fake artists—it'll be fake listeners.'