The first "AI musician" signed a record deal. He can't sing

Oliver McCann records under the name imoliver, and his story started with frustration. The 37-year-old from the UK works as a visual designer. He has no musical training, doesn't sing and doesn't play any instrument. So he turned to song generators to turn his own lyrics into finished tracks: indie pop, country-rap, electronic music. In August 2025 he signed a deal with the independent label Hallwood Media. The Associated Press reported it was the first time the industry had seen a publishing contract signed with an "artificial musician". McCann makes no secret of the fact that all of his work relies on generative tools.

18 percent and silence around the numbers

The scale of the phenomenon is only partly measurable. The French streaming service Deezer reported that 18 percent of the tracks users upload every day are made entirely in a model. It also noted that such songs usually get few plays. Hardly anyone actually listens to them. The biggest platforms, Spotify first among them, refuse to publish any data on the share of AI-generated music in their catalogues. That lack of knowledge is one of the reasons behind disputes over how to split the money.

The three largest labels, Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group, had sued the music generation platforms Suno and Udio a year earlier over copyright. In June 2026 the "big three" were in negotiations meant to lead to an agreement on splitting revenue from tracks made with AI. AP assessed that the generative music market was at the time operating in a kind of "legal vacuum", and the labels would sooner or later have to impose their own rules to bring those tracks into circulation.

The label will detect AI in someone else's playlist

Deezer didn't wait for an agreement. In June 2026 it released a free tool that scans playlists on outside platforms, Apple Music, Spotify and others, and checks whether they contain tracks generated by AI. The company was one of the first big services to start labelling such songs. It had earlier tried to sell its recognition technology to other platforms, without much response. "No other platform went our way, so we decided everyone should be able to check their own playlist," said Deezer's CEO, Alexis Lanternier. Using the tool is simple. You go to the site, pick the service you use, authorise access to your account and wait for the analysis. For listeners it is the first widely available tool that lets them answer for themselves how much of their favourite list was made without a human.