The ongoing debate about AI-generated music has shifted sharply in recent months. With several major streaming services now taking steps to ban or limit AI-derived tracks, the argument often gets framed as protecting artistry or preserving authenticity. But beneath that moral posture lurks a quieter truth: much of this is about taste—and the uncomfortable idea that these bans amount to filtering out “crappy” music.
It’s no secret that most AI-generated music today isn’t exactly Grammy material. Endless lo-fi loops, uninspired lyrics, strange vocal inflections—many tracks feel like early drafts of creativity rather than finished art. Listeners often describe them as hollow, predictable, or just plain boring. If the objection is simply that AI music lacks quality, then let’s call it what it is: a ban on mediocrity. Yet, taken seriously, that’s a slippery slope.
Who decides what counts as bad art? Streaming algorithms already quietly shape taste, promoting what performs well while burying the rest. Now imagine an additional layer of gatekeeping where platforms, acting like curators, block music they deem subpar because it comes from a machine. It’s an aesthetic judgment disguised as a technological one. And taste, history reminds us, is rarely objective. Punk, noise, and lo-fi hip hop—all of which once sounded “bad” to mainstream ears—are now celebrated genres. Sound texture, imperfection, and rawness became the very markers of authenticity.
By banning AI-generated music under the guise of quality control, streaming services risk positioning themselves as arbiters of what counts as “real” or “worthy” art. If their logic extends further, what’s next—banning amateur bedroom producers or artists who rely too heavily on presets or quantization? After all, the line between “AI-assisted” and “algorithmically influenced” is already blurry. Even the recommendation algorithms that shape your listening feed use forms of AI.
The darker irony is that streaming platforms built their empires on democratization—giving anyone with a laptop the chance to be heard. But if they use the same infrastructure to suppress creative tools that make music-making more accessible, they may undo decades of progress in musical diversity. Today it’s AI music that’s excluded; tomorrow it might be an emerging genre dismissed as soulless or derivative.
At the end of the day, the decision to ban AI-generated tracks isn’t just a technological policy—it’s a cultural statement about who gets to be called a musician and what ideas count as music. The majority of AI songs might be mediocre now, but that’s hardly unique; so is most human-made music. Great art in any form often begins in the margins of “bad taste.”
So when streaming platforms claim they’re protecting quality by banning AI, perhaps the more accurate question is this: are they protecting art, or just protecting their idea of what art should sound like?