SubmitHub sets 85% AI cutoff for music promotion submissions

SubmitHub has announced that it will exclude tracks judged at least 85% likely to contain AI-generated audio from its music-promotion services. The threshold covers fully generated songs and hybrid recordings that have been processed or edited by people, and affected submissions will have no appeals process. The policy will be enforced through SH Labs, SubmitHub’s detection system. SubmitHub said the system had achieved 99.4% accuracy in third-party tests, and that about 11% of recently uploaded tracks scored above the new cutoff. Writing a song’s lyrics or underlying composition will not exempt a recording if its completed audio crosses the threshold. SubmitHub said the decision runs counter to conventional business logic because it cuts off about 10% of its revenue stream. Jason Grishkoff said the company wanted to help people promote “real music” and should not sell promotion services to AI creators if platform algorithms made those services unlikely to work. He said AI could be an assistive tool, including for ideas, stems and samples, but objected to an influx of music made “with the click of a button.” A Musicngear blog characterised the move more narrowly, saying AI-assisted music remained allowed. But the policy as described by Digital Music News applies the 85% restriction to hybrid tracks as well as wholly AI-generated recordings, making the detector’s score, rather than the amount of subsequent human editing, decisive. SubmitHub said it expected the rollout to be messy and planned to solicit feedback and iterate rapidly. The 85% cutoff was the element it considered most likely to change in the near future. As we reported in August, SH Labs’ analysis of more than one million releases in July found that nearly 40% showed signs of AI involvement. The detector classified 23.2% as fully AI-generated and another 15.3% as containing AI-generated audio that had later been modified or processed by humans. That analysis also pointed to a disclosure gap. SubmitHub asks artists directly about AI use during submission, yet 31% of artists whose music was identified as containing AI-generated audio said they had not used AI. SubmitHub has said that nearly one in three AI creators conceal their use of the technology. SubmitHub said Spotify had moved from an emphasis on transparency toward pushing AI music out of recommendations, while Deezer had introduced detection and removed flagged tracks from algorithmic recommendations and editorial playlists. SubmitHub said its own aim was to let curators decide whether they wanted AI music and to keep almost all of it from reaching those who did not.