TIDAL Blocks Royalties on Fully AI-Generated Music, Setting Possible Industry Template

TIDAL will stop paying royalties on wholly AI-generated tracks and tag them 'AI' in-app starting July 15, 2026. The policy explicitly conditions monetization on authorship type—among the music industry's clearest responses to synthetic content flooding streaming catalogs. Whether other platforms adopt similar approaches depends on whether TIDAL's detection methodology proves reliable at scale and survives legal challenge. If so, it could become a template; if enforcement leaks, it may instead highlight why technical underpinning matters as much as policy.