Bandcamp has banned all music made with AI

[highplainsdem]

Source: NME

Bandcamp has officially banned AI music from its platform.

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It went on to say the fact it is “home to such a vibrant community of real people making incredible music is something we want to protect and maintain”.

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It also said that any use of AI tools to impersonate other artists or styles is “strictly prohibited in accordance with our existing policies prohibiting impersonation and intellectual property infringement.”

Bandcamp added: “If you encounter music or audio that appears to be made entirely or with heavy reliance on generative AI, please use our reporting tools to flag the content for review by our team. We reserve the right to remove any music on suspicion of being AI generated.”

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Read more: https://www.nme.com/news/music/bandcamp-has-banned-all-music-made-with-ai-3923071

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Good for them!!!!!!!

From their blog: https://blog.bandcamp.com/

Bandcamp’s mission is to help spread the healing power of music by building a community where artists thrive through the direct support of their fans. We believe that the human connection found through music is a vital part of our society and culture, and that music is much more than a product to be consumed. It’s the result of a human cultural dialog stretching back before the written word.

Similarly, musicians are more than mere producers of sound. They are vital members of our communities, our culture, and our social fabric. Bandcamp was built to directly connect artists and their fans, and to make it easy for fans to support artists equitably so that they can keep making music.


Today we are fortifying our mission by articulating our policy on generative AI, so that musicians can keep making music, and so that fans have confidence that the music they find on Bandcamp was created by humans.

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[SheltieLover]

1. Good for them!!!!!

[Bluetus]

2. I wish them well. It is fraught.

Last edited Wed Jan 14, 2026, 11:51 PM - Edit history (1)

Where do you draw the line? AI tech has been used at all levels of the music production industry for a long time. It is a fairly recent development that an entire song that approaches commercial quality can be produced entirely from ai. Certainly it would be nice to ban all of that.

But I just don't see how you can draw the line effectively. For example, a few weeks ago, just for fun, I generated a song entirely from AI. It was not half bad. And I am planning to rearrange that music for a live band to perform in a show later this spring. I will introduce it and tell the backstory about how it originated in AI. I think it's important for the audience to understand what is and what is not possible.

Would Bandcamp ban that particular selection? I don't think they should. It certainly involves a great deal of human artistry. But how do you draw the line between enough human input and too much AI?

[highplainsdem]

3. Because those tools are trained illegally on stolen intellectual property, any use of them is unethical

and a betrayal of real musicians.

Your plan to rearrange music generated by AI for a live band to perform later is in effect promotion of AI, and very harmful. Please reconsider it. AI gets enough undeserved hype from greedy corporations and tech robber barons. No real musician should add to that.

Editing to add that no use of those tools is "just for fun.". See the Bluesky replies to a teacher's union president who thought some AI slop was " fun" :
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220895856

[highplainsdem]

4. And btw, what you wrote about AI being used at all levels of the music industry "for a long time" is wrong and

Last edited Wed Jan 14, 2026, 07:46 PM - Edit history (1)

very misleading.

Generative AI, the type you used unfortunately to generate a song you want others to hear, has been around only a couple of years, with the two most popular AI music generators becoming available in the spring of 2024. Since then the people using them, none of whom should have been using them, have flooded music platforms with AI slop. Deezer alone has been getting more than 50,000 AI-generated tracks PER DAY.

YouTube is flooded with that crap, too.

Seriously, if you are a musician - as your mentioning rearrarranging an AI tune for real musicians suggests you might be - please steer clear of generative AI, for your sake and others'. There is a very strong backlash against the exploitation and fraud that is generative AI. I can't imagine real musicians wanting to play something written by genAI, or real music lovers wanting to hear it. If you try springing something AI generated on real musicians and music lovers, don't be surprised if they walk out or let you know in no uncertain terms what they think of genAI.

[Bluetus]

10. By "long time" I mean 5+ years

That wasn't generative AI, but it was AI processes that could have a big impact on the quality of output. None of it is as good as real experts, but some of it is a lot better than what the average professional can do.

And truly, the generative stuff can only mimic what it is trained on. Frankly, I have very little use for music that is so formulaic as to be easily aped, but that is 90% of what is out there. I have trouble working up too much sympathy for people who spend their days trying to copy the latest sound, then get unhappy when a computer can steal somebody else's sound better than they can.

Of course, this is a race to the bottom. Even the best, most creative and innovative music will eventually be subsumed. Hopefully the humanoid robot makers will perfect their machines, so there will be somebody to go to the clubs listening to all this regurgitative AI music.

[highplainsdem]

11. I don't believe that AI music taking over is inevitable - that's propaganda from the AI companies. And

I have 100% more sympathy for real artists making real music, even if they're hoping it will help them to try what worked for someone else, than I have for anyone using a plagiarism machine to generate something that exists only because of stolen intellectual property. AI users really have little control over what is generated, and the AI can offer endless alternatives from the same prompt. It isn't creativity and artistry. It's more like online shopping using various keywords and options, with the AI user claiming the option they finally chose was something they created.

It's anti-human. Anti-art.

[Bluetus]

15. Just to be clear, my use of the AI material

Last edited Thu Jan 15, 2026, 03:33 PM - Edit history (1)

is to show the audience what AI does and how they can recognize fake art. I have no intention of using AI on a regular basis. I don't need to. But I think this particular exercise will be entertaining. This AI came up with some clever lyrics intermixed with gibberish. The music track was sort of a Tower of Power thing with a Calypso influence. It followed a common formula (intro, verse, re-chorus, chorus, re-entry, break chorus, etc.) So it sounds like 1000 other empty vessels you can hear every hour of the day. But there were a few interesting harmonic twists that put this AI ahead of 90% of the pop "artists" out there.

In this instance, it will be a jazz big band playing in a popular jazz club to an audience that is hop to Hancock, Coltrane, Blakey, Shorter, Hubbard and all the other creative geniuses. I think they will get a kick out of this moment of monkey-see-monkey-do music.

Training a computer to do what Max Martin has been doing for decades is just not something that gets me too worked up.

[highplainsdem]

16. You're still likely to end up encouraging some of those people to use AI.

[Bluetus]

17. No competent lawyer files a brief written by AI

But they might use AI to give them some angles on arguments and case law. (At today's state of the art, even that is hazardous because AI just keeps making things up out of thin air.)

Skilled artists aren't going to have AI produce their next album, but they might use some AI to try out some different ideas. And they can certainly use some AI in the production process.

Things will probably look a lot different in 10 years or even 5 years, and I will probably have a different view by then. However, as of today, IMHO, anybody who relies heavily on AI is probably just faking it in the first place. It isn't that much different from AutoTune.

And a reality in the pop world is that it has been a long time since anybody outside the top 1% have been making a living from record company contracts or radio airplay (or now Spotify royalties). The reality for most pop itinerant musicians is that they have to make their living from live shows. If they want to mix in some AI or backing tracks, that's an artistic choice as far as I am concerned. Is it really different from when live bands first started using Oberheim or Prophet synths to add string sounds to the live performance? How dare they fake their strings? This is putting violinists out of work.

The day that songs are produced entirely with AI is the day I expect to see a show with nothing but Elon Musk's robots in the audience.

And I'm not really kidding about that. Some people have predicted it will not be long until more than half the traffic on the Internet will be bots pushing around bullshit AI content consumed by other bot accounts. Anybody on Facebook lately is probably being flooded with the tsunami of articles that tell an emotional story of a heroic figure prevailing over impossible odds, written in the style of all that old Paul Harvey crap. None of it is true, but the fake stories are flooding the zone.

[highplainsdem]

21. No ethical person should be using generative AI, period, for anything, unless forced to do so by a

school or employer, or possibly by a disability.

Voluntary use of generative AI, by anyone aware of how AI models are trained, shows the user really doesn't give a damn about the theft of intellectual property to train the AI. And that attitude is despicable. Even if they act ethically in other areas, using AI shows they decided to check all their principles at the door for whatever convenience they think the AI gives them.

They're also being dumbed down using it.

It's one of the stupidest, most unethical and most antisocial things anyone could do, harmful to society overall as well as all the people whose intellectual property was stolen to train the AI.

[LudwigPastorius]

5. Now, if only Spotify and the other streaming platforms...

would follow suite.

Yeah RIGHT! That’ll never happen because fake AI music makes them more profit.

Easier to rake it in when you don’t have to pay those pesky musicians, don’tcha know?

[littlemissmartypants]

6. Very cool. ❤️

[tazcat]

8. I absolutely can't stand ai so called music.

There was a show I followed for years but the wife of the host apparently is bored and is pushing the most god awful noise. Needless to say I cannot watch anymore.

[Tikki]

9. I am a happy CAMPER and have been for years.

My downloads are of a specific niche of a niche. Still, I want to know that someone isn't trying to put something over on me.

Tikki

[FakeNoose]

13. Why aren't they all doing this?

Wasn't there some kind of controversy over at Spotify? (I lost track because I'm not on Spotify any more.)
Really, it's not in anyone's benefit to promote AI-generated music, is it?

[highplainsdem]

14. Spotify makes more money from AI-generated music. It can't be copyrighted, so they don't have to

pay royalties. Spotify also has a lot of music under different names, often fake names, by songwriters and musicians doing what's called work for hire, which Spotify owns outright and so pays no royalties on. The more of this garbage they can get people to accept, the higher their profits.

[FakeNoose]

18. Well I get that

There might be a temporary "gain" in profit.

However you ultimately lose profit if all your subscribers quit in disgust. That's what I did probably 4 years ago. It used to be pretty great for a while, but it got overrun with rightwing podcasts, for one thing, and also the AI-generated fake music. It quickly became worthless to me, I wasn't paying them $10 per month.

[Bluetus]

19. Of course it can be copyrighted.

Now, if you are saying that Spotify is creating AI content themselves, then they could be the copyright holder.

If you use Suno for free, you agree that Suno has the copyright. But if you pay the Suno subscription, Suno grants the copyright to you.

Any copyright can be challenged as being a ripoff of prior art. That doesn't change with AI. But the kind of pap that is produced by Suno is so much like all the rest of the mindless pap that was ripped off from prior generations of musicians, it is pretty tough to win these infringement cases.

It can actually be argued that technologies like Suno can include guard rails that ensure their ripoffs pass legal muster. In other words, Suno may actually be less of a ripoff than what human artists have been doing to each other basically forever. Bach "borrowed" heavily from Vivaldi and others. And countless successors tried to capture that perfect Bach fugue style. Nothing new here, except that it is a lot easier to steal music today when there are 3 chords and the "melodies" are mostly just diatonic meanderings on the same 4 notes without any changes to key center or rhythmic interest.

[highplainsdem]

20. No. That's not true, and they don't claim copyright. See this:

https://help.suno.com/en/articles/2746945

Copyrights are complex, and vary by region! To ensure you have the most up-to-date information, we suggest reaching your local copyright office before applying.

It is important to know there is a difference between ownership and copyrights. It is often said that if you come up with something on your own, you automatically assume the rights to it. In music, there are several other factors that help determine rights beyond ownership.

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In the US, copyright laws protect material created by a human. Music made 100% with AI would not qualify for copyright protection because a human did not write the lyrics or the music. Writing the prompt does not constitute the creation of the song.

If you wrote the lyrics for your song(s), you own those lyrics. Most copyright offices will allow you to register those lyrics on their own, and you may be able to use those lyrics to register your whole song as well. Some regions/registrars may recognize you as the writer of the song and Suno as an instrument to help you create the song. If this happens, the song will likely be eligible for copyright protection.

IMO it's pure bullshit that Suno, or the Suno user, own what's spat out by their plagiarism machine, because it produces anything resembling music only because they sto!e all the copyrighted music they could steal, AND all the text they could steal describing that music - reviews, articles and books about the music they stole - because that's the only way their mindless machine can link the prompt the AI users give it to anything resembling the type of music they're ordering, in a way that's no more artistic than ordering a pizza.

But if you sign the agreement with Suno that's described on that page, and you've paid for one of their plans, they won't try to sue you for monetizing fake music neither you nor they created, whereas they will block or sue you if you haven't paid them.

Btw, the last time I looked at Suno's complete TOS, it included a clause admitting that they can't guarantee their plagiarism machine won't spit out the same song for you that it spat out for someone else. They're not really in control of what it spits out, any more than the AI user is.

They're nothing but thieves. And AI users aren't artists. They're people who don't mind taking advantage of theft to pretend they have knowledge and skills they don't have.

What generative AI does best is fraud.

[Bluetus]

22. I don't think you understand copyrights.

Anybody can assert a copyright. You simply file a paper and pay the fee. That's the easy part. Defending it is the hard part.

What I said is 100% accurate. With the free Suno, the user agrees that any copyright privileges remain with Suno. If you pay the subscription, Suno waives its right to the copyright and the customer can claim the copyright.

That doesn't mean the copyright will hold up, but that has nothing to do with AI. I've played around a little on Suno. In my (non-lawyer) view, the songs I've generated could hold up in a copyright suit, but the songs aren't good enough that anybody would challenge them. In another 5 years, that may be different.

[highplainsdem]

23. You're still 100% wrong, because you ignored this paragraph:

In the US, copyright laws protect material created by a human. Music made 100% with AI would not qualify for copyright protection because a human did not write the lyrics or the music. Writing the prompt does not constitute the creation of the song.

Trying to claim copyright on a song made 100% with AI is fraud. Legally fraud. It doesn't matter if no one later sues you, challenging your claim. It's still fraud.

That page on Suno's website makes it clear that they do not claim copyright and know that what is generated by AI can't be copyrighted.

See this page, since you don't understand copyright. Note there is an exception for what's called work for hire:

https://www.etblaw.com/can-you-copyright-something-you-didnt-create/

[Bluetus]

24. What you are citing is only an opinion by the copyright office and that is not binding on anything.

The case law is limited. I agree that the case law, so far, addresses only the case of 100% generation from AI. That isn't what most people do with Suno. Most people supply some lyrics or some musical lines. And they might record the work with live musicians, and certainly perform it live. The 100% AI generation case is pretty much irrelevant.

The stuff that comes out of the AI engine is not commercial grade -- not by a long shot. Suno will provide stems. Some people will then take these stems and combine with other AI sources to add other layers to the mix. And even if the stems are untouched, there is plenty of human artistry in the mixing and mastering process. None of this is addressed in case law yet, AFAIK.

The case law, if I understand it correctly, only applies to files written entirely from AI without any modification. Thus, if you simply apply a little compression or verb and then write the file yourself, then you are clear of the 100% rule. That is nonsensical as a real world standard, but I believe that's where we are today legally.

As of the moment, you most certainly can claim a copyright for your work inasmuch as there was human artistry involved (lyric suggestions, musical lines, arranging, mixing, mastering), and if you pay the Suno subscription, they will release any claims for their parts of the project.

We are a long way from these questions being settled.

[highplainsdem]

25. You can claim a partial copyright if you did any of the work and can prove it. I doubt applying a little

compression would qualify.

The robber barons of the AI companies are hoping the law can be changed.

No ethical person should ever hope that their theft of intellectual property will someday be legalized.

And real artists should create their own work. Use of generative AI is pretense and fraud, IMO, and deserves to be completely rejected and discredited.