Weekly wrap-up
This Week in AI Music: Flip the Switch, Read the Label
The week the streaming services started sorting AI music, and didn't sort it the same way. Six stories, plus what we shipped.
Published on Song Tested this week
Made With: Silver Bullet Soundtrack (Oct 15). Nathan's own album: an '80s-style soundtrack for a movie that never got one, made on Suno and Udio while driving between filming locations. Read it.
ElevenLabs Music review (Oct 17). Same eight prompts as our Suno v6 test, 14 takes scored blind: 3.82 out of 5, against Suno v6's 4.56. The songs are good, with real double-tracked guitars and a bluegrass and drum and bass mashup that held together. The trouble was getting there: long, flat intros, a good song by the "least scenic route," at about 900 credits a minute. Read our ElevenLabs Music review.
Deezer will let you hide AI music completely
On Oct 13, Deezer announced an on/off setting that removes fully AI-generated tracks, albums and their artists from your search results. It's due worldwide before the end of 2026. Deezer says nearly 90,000 fully AI tracks reach it every day, more than half of all deliveries on peak days, and that it has kept more than 42 million out of its recommendations since January 2025. Music with "limited AI-assisted elements" is treated differently (Deezer).
YouTube Music starts labeling AI songs
A day later, on Oct 14, YouTube Music began showing a label on the player for songs "created primarily using generative AI," such as a track where a model made both the composition and the vocals. Tapping it explains more, and the labels are coming to the main YouTube app too. YouTube says it uses partner disclosures and its own detection tools (YouTube; Music Business Worldwide). If you release AI-assisted music, check how your distributor tags it before YouTube decides for you (AI Musicpreneur).
Deezer's AI detector makes TIME's Best Inventions list
On Oct 15, TIME named Deezer's AI music detection tool one of its Best Inventions of 2026. Deezer says it catches music from Suno, Udio and Riffusion, puts its own accuracy at 99.8%, and found that up to 85% of streams on fully AI tracks in 2025 were fraudulent (Deezer; TIME).
A pop star's voice trademark clears a first hurdle
Taylor Swift's company, TAS Rights Management, has filed to trademark recordings of her saying "Hey, it's Taylor Swift" in the UK, the EU and Australia, following three US applications in April. IP Australia accepted the Australian sound mark on Oct 12, six days after it was filed. It isn't registered yet: it's in a two-month opposition period (Music Business Worldwide).
The RIAA names an AI voice site in its piracy filing
The RIAA's 2026 "Notorious Markets" submission to the US Trade Representative, reported Oct 15, names Lalals, a UAE-based site selling voice cloning and soundalike vocal models of famous artists, alongside the shadow library Anna's Archive (Digital Music News). The list isn't a legal ruling, and rebuttals close Oct 21 (AI Musicpreneur). Not to be confused with LALAL.AI, the stem splitter.
Suno adds team workspaces, and its download cap still bites
On Oct 15, Suno added shareable workspaces for Pro and Premier users, plus shareable custom models for Premier (Suno). Worth remembering if you're paying for those plans: since Sep 3, Pro gets 20 download credits a month and Premier 60 (Suno help). We hit that wall ourselves, which is why this week's song came from Mureka.
Coming this week
Tuesday, Oct 20: our Mureka review. Same eight prompts, 16 blind takes, and a duet that surprised our editor. Plus a new AI music price tracker: what Suno, ElevenLabs, Mureka, Udio and Stable Audio actually cost per song you can keep.
Opinions are Nathan's.