TIDAL Stops Paying Royalties on Fully AI-Generated Music

TIDAL will block royalties on entirely synthetic tracks starting July 15, 2026, and label them 'AI' in-app. The move conditions payment on authorship type—one of the music industry's firmest stances on synthetic content flooding catalogs. Adoption elsewhere hinges on whether TIDAL's detection holds at scale and withstands legal challenge. Success could set an industry template; failure may instead expose why the technical layer matters as much as policy.