Billboard France gives Deezer Innovation Award for AI-music detection

Deezer received Billboard France’s Innovation Award for its proprietary AI-music detection technology at the inaugural Billboard Power Players ceremony in Paris on Sept. 15. Alexis Lanternier, Deezer’s chief executive, was also named among the French music industry’s influential figures. The company says its system, deployed in January 2025, can identify tracks generated entirely by artificial intelligence with 99.8% accuracy. It detected and flagged more than 13.4 million such tracks during 2025. Lanternier said the distinction recognised Deezer’s teams and their commitment to use technology in the service of music, artists and fans. He said the company would continue to pursue “an approach based on transparency, fairness, and responsibility.” The award comes three weeks after Billboard said it would flag AI use in its charts and editorial coverage, as covered in August. Deezer said almost 90,000 fully AI-generated tracks were delivered to its platform each day in June, when they accounted for more than half of new uploads at their peak. The company said AI-generated material still represented only 1% to 3% of plays on Deezer after it introduced measures intended to protect transparency and artists’ earnings. In April, it said up to 85% of streams from fully AI-generated tracks in 2025 had been identified as fraudulent and excluded from royalty payments. Songs detected as AI-generated are removed automatically from Deezer’s algorithmic recommendations and excluded from editorial playlists. The company has also stopped storing high-resolution versions of AI tracks. Since January 2026, Deezer has made the technology available to streaming platforms, distributors and collective management organisations. It said Sacem, Buma-Stemra and EJI had adopted it, and that broader access could help establish common standards for identifying synthetic content, combating fraud and protecting human creativity. The company has also released a free online detector based on the same technology. Music Week reported that it operates in 27 languages and lets users check playlists across 20 commonly used streaming platforms for AI-generated tracks. The recognition coincided with broader business gains cited by Deezer. The company said it reached profitability for the first time in 2025, reporting €534 million in revenue and €8 million in positive net income. Its direct subscriber base in France rose 8.6% over the year. Billboard’s Global Power Players coverage included Lanternier among streaming executives and quoted him as saying Deezer was the only major streaming service detecting and tagging AI-generated music while removing it from algorithmic recommendations. He said the measures give listeners a clearer choice while making it harder for fraudsters to manipulate the system.