AI-Generated Music Is Everywhere, But Study Shows Only 3% Of Listeners Can Tell The Difference

In 2025, the music streaming service Deezer partnered with market research company Ipsos to conduct a study on how well people can identify AI-generated music. The result was disconcerting: only 3% of listeners could tell the difference between AI music and human-made music. This statistic is more alarming now than ever, because Deezer reported in July 2026 that 90,000 AI-generated tracks are being uploaded every day — constituting more than 50% of all new music uploads on the Deezer platform.

Currently, AI-generated music is entirely legal. Not only that, it's proven to be quite profitable for certain individuals. An AI-generated rock band topped 500,000 listeners on Spotify, which translates to a minimum of $1,500 in revenue, even if each listener only streamed a song once. One song in particular is "Dust on the Wind" by The Velvet Sundown, which has achieved nearly five million streams on Spotify as of the time of writing. That comes out to at least $15,000 in revenue from a single AI-generated track.

Some music platforms are taking action against AI music, but one of the uncomfortable truths about using Spotify (and other big-name services), is that AI slop won't be going anywhere anytime soon. These companies stand to benefit from listeners who stream AI-generated content without being able to tell the difference. If you want to avoid it, the best thing you can do is learn to identify AI music yourself.

Learning how to identify AI music is difficult. There are clear signs that a video is AI-generated, but it's not so easy when your only tool is your ear. Here's the trick, according to music savants on Reddit: Listen for poor fidelity or "dull" sounds in the music's high-frequency (treble) ranges. Audiophiles may also be able to hear "lossy audio," which is typically a sign of file compression, but it can also indicate a low-quality AI generation. If you know how to read an audio spectrogram, you can sometimes detect these clues visually.

However, even with these techniques at your disposal, you almost certainly will not be able to spot AI music by ear 100% of the time. Forbes points out that the biggest clues aren't in the music; they're around the music. Be aware of artists who are becoming popular suspiciously fast, or who have no online presence prior to their music being published. Become fluent at reading artist credits on your favorite music platform and determining if the people are real. From there, it's a bit easier to infer whether the music itself is real.

Deezer, the company behind the AI music detection study, was also responsible for launching the first AI tagging system for music streaming. Deezer also excludes fully AI-generated tracks from algorithmic recommendations, and it denies royalty payments to AI artists who commit fraud or stream manipulation on the platform.

Beatport has taken this one step further by banning AI-generated music from the platform entirely. This comes in the wake of Beatport's partnership with Beatdapp, a music fraud detection company known for its advanced AI music detection tools. Other companies that partner with Beatdapp to combat AI-powered streaming fraud include Hangout FM, Audiomack, and Napster.

But what should you do if the big-name platforms are the only ones that have the music you're looking for? Well, users agree that YouTube Music has a superior algorithm compared to other streaming services. This means that YouTube is better at recommending music that you will actually like, which can lead to discovery of real artists that suit your tastes. It's not perfect, though, as some users report that YouTube still recommends AI-generated music from time to time, and there are no options to exclude specific content from your taste profile. Until more companies come to terms with why Gen Z hates AI, this is the best compromise that most platforms will provide.