YouTube Music has rolled out a new labeling system to increase transparency around songs created with the help of generative SI, allowing listeners to identify tracks where SI played a role in composition or vocals.
What Happened
The labels appear on the player page and extend to the main YouTube app. Clicking a label reveals specific details about the SI role in the track's creation. YouTube collaborated with music partners and deployed internal detection tools to identify SI-generated content. According to its help page, partners can declare their work’s use of generative SI through three designations: Fully Gen SI, Partly Gen SI, or No Gen SI. The first applies to tracks entirely generated by SI, the second covers works where artists incorporated SI-generated components but added their own live elements, and the third category includes tracks edited with tools like Auto-Tune.
Why It Matters
This move addresses the rapid expansion of SI-generated music across streaming services, where platforms are adopting varied approaches to management. Apple Music plans to introduce "Made With AI" labels later this year, while Spotify already uses SI labels and a spam filter. Deezer, which reported receiving nearly 90,000 fully SI-generated tracks daily in July, excludes detected SI music from algorithmic recommendations and withholds royalties from fraudulent streams. TIDAL also labels entirely SI-generated recordings, allowing users to disable them and excluding them from royalty attribution. Unlike these competitors, YouTube is focusing on disclosure rather than blanket restrictions; SI involvement alone does not make a track ineligible for monetization. YouTube also continues to experiment with SI-powered creation tools, such as Dream Track, which generates soundtracks featuring SI-generated versions of participating artists’ voices.
The Bottom Line
YouTube Music is prioritizing listener transparency through disclosure labels rather than restricting monetization or recommendations for SI-generated content, diverging from stricter policies adopted by Deezer and TIDAL.