The distributors do not agree, and the disagreement is not small. DistroKid will distribute a fully AI-generated track if you disclose it. CD Baby will not distribute one even if only part of it is AI, and says repeated attempts end the relationship.
Below is what each policy actually says, checked in August 2026, with the distinction that decides almost every rejection: AI-assisted and AI-generated are not the same word, and most people reading a permissive policy are reading one that was never about their kind of track.
Key takeaways
- DistroKid accepts fully AI-generated music — you must own 100% of the rights and declare it through AI Credits.
- TuneCore will not distribute 100% AI-generated tracks, only AI-assisted ones with meaningful human contribution.
- CD Baby rejects AI outright — fully and partially generated, naming Suno and Udio explicitly.
- LANDR caps AI releases at 12 songs a month and excludes them from Content ID, Meta, TikTok and Deezer.
- Amuse accepts with disclosure, excluded from Meta and YouTube Content ID.
- Selling direct involves no distributor at all, so none of these policies apply to it.
The policies, side by side
First, the distinction everything turns on
Every policy on this page is written around one line, and it is not the line most people assume.
AI-assisted means you made the music and a tool helped with production — mastering, stem separation, pitch correction. Every distributor here accepts that, including the strictest one. It is not controversial and it usually does not even need declaring.
AI-generated means a prompt produced the audio. Suno, Udio, Stable Audio, MusicGen. This is the only category anyone is actually arguing about, and it is where the five distributors split three to two.
If you searched for whether a distributor "allows AI music" and found a reassuring answer, check which of those two it was answering. That gap is where most rejections come from.
DistroKid — yes, with disclosure
DistroKid's help centre states plainly that it accepts music created with AI tools, subject to rules. The conditions are the ones you would expect from a platform protecting itself rather than gatekeeping the art:
- You must own 100% of the rights, including to the AI output — which for Suno and Udio means a paid plan, since free tiers grant personal, non-commercial use only.
- No impersonation of anyone's voice, likeness or identity.
- No mass-generated spam uploaded to game streaming algorithms.
The disclosure mechanism is AI Credits. AI-generated audio, lyrics or composition requires them; AI-assisted mixing, mastering or autotune does not. You declare which elements were AI — lyrics, music, all of the audio, or part of it — and the credits stay editable after upload. Spotify and Apple Music display these credits to listeners.
Worth reading carefully: DistroKid itself notes that streaming services may still reject a track even after DistroKid accepts it. Its policy governs what it will pass on, not what Spotify does next. That two-stage reality is covered in can you sell AI music on Spotify.
TuneCore — AI-assisted only
This is the one most often reported wrongly, including in places that should know better. TuneCore will not distribute works that are 100% AI-generated. It does accept AI-assisted music where a human made a meaningful contribution — original vocals, lyrics, substantial arrangement — assessed case by case.
Two further points matter for anyone using a generator. TuneCore has said it supports generative AI only where the underlying models were trained on fully licensed datasets, and in May 2026 it stated it would not distribute AI tracks made on what it called "pirate studios". Given the ongoing litigation over how the major generators were trained, that is a broader exclusion than it first appears.
It also runs detection on uploads, with claimed accuracy up to 99.9%. Attempting to slip a generated track past it risks account restrictions rather than a simple rejection.
CD Baby — no, and further than you think
CD Baby has the strictest position of the five, and the important detail is its scope. Per its own content policy, CD Baby cannot accept AI-generated content even if it is commercially licensed, and even if you contributed original sounds and only part of the recording is AI.
That closes the blending workaround. Layering a live vocal over a generated instrumental does not move the track across the line — it is still partially AI, and partially AI is still refused. Suno, Udio, Stable Audio and MusicGen are named directly.
Enforcement is stated too: content found to be AI-generated is removed from distribution, and continued attempts mean CD Baby may stop working with you. The one exception is the same as everywhere else — AI used as a production tool on human-created composition and performance is fine.
LANDR and Amuse — yes, with real limits
Both accept AI-generated music with mandatory disclosure, and both attach restrictions that matter more than the yes/no answer.
LANDR caps AI releases at 12 songs per month per subscriber and excludes them from YouTube Content ID, Meta, TikTok, Deezer, Pandora and Tencent. Amuse permits up to 10 releases per 7 days and excludes AI content from Meta and YouTube Content ID.
Those exclusions are the real cost. Losing Content ID means you cannot monetise or claim your own music when it appears in other people's videos, and losing TikTok and Meta removes the two platforms where new music most often catches. A yes with those carve-outs is a meaningfully smaller yes.
Disclosure is not the risk — hiding it is
The most common mistake we see is treating the AI checkbox as a trap to avoid. It is the opposite.
Declaring AI use is required where it applies, and platforms have been explicit that transparency does not cost placement. What ends accounts is the reverse: undeclared AI caught by a classifier, a catalogue rescan, or a fraud investigation months after release. One is a metadata field. The other is your entire catalogue coming down.
The mechanics of how detection actually works — watermarks, spectral fingerprints, rescans — are in distributing AI music without takedowns.
The distributors not in the table
Five is not all of them. Several smaller distributors accept AI-generated music, and they are worth knowing about precisely because the big names are where the restrictions cluster.
RouteNote, UnitedMasters and Symphonic all currently accept AI music subject to the same universal conditions — you hold the rights, you are not impersonating anyone, you are not mass-uploading. RouteNote is notable for having a genuinely free commission-based tier, which matters if you are testing whether a catalogue earns anything before paying an annual fee.
The pattern across all of them is worth naming: a distributor's AI stance tracks how exposed it is to the majors. Those with label relationships and publishing arms have written the strictest policies; independents competing on access have written the loosest. That is a commercial position, not a technical judgement about your music, and it is why the answer differs so sharply between two services doing the same job.
What to do if a release is already rejected
A rejection is not a ban, and it is usually recoverable — but only if you read which of the three things happened.
- Policy rejection. The distributor does not accept your category at all — CD Baby with anything generated, TuneCore with 100% AI. Nothing about the file changes this. Move to a distributor whose policy fits, and do not resubmit.
- Classifier rejection. An automated confidence score flagged the audio. This is the one people mistake for a policy rejection and then argue with support about. It is a threshold on the file, not a judgement on you.
- Rights or metadata rejection. Missing disclosure, an unclear owner, or a sample you cannot document. The most fixable of the three, and the most common.
What not to do is resubmit the same file to the same distributor repeatedly. Both CD Baby and TuneCore describe escalating consequences for repeated attempts, and an account restriction is considerably more expensive than a rejected single.
The route none of these policies govern
Every rule on this page governs putting music into someone else's streaming catalogue. Selling a track yourself is a different transaction entirely: no approval queue, no upload classifier, no AI policy — because there is no third party whose catalogue needs protecting.
That is not a loophole and it is not a substitute. Streaming brings discovery that a storefront cannot; a storefront pays roughly 323 times better per listener than a stream does. The sensible shape is both, in that order of importance. Played.fm exists for the first half of that: your own storefront, 0% on every sale, every genre welcome, AI or not.
So which should you use?
- Fully AI-generated tracks, streaming everywhere: DistroKid. It is the only one of the five that takes them without capping volume or removing platforms.
- AI-assisted, human-performed music: any of them. Even CD Baby. This is not the contested category.
- Low volume and you want the AI question off the table: LANDR or Amuse, accepting the Content ID and social exclusions.
- Do not use CD Baby or TuneCore for generated tracks. Not as a criticism — they have written their policies clearly, and paying for a service that has told you it will reject your release is just an avoidable cost.
Fees are a separate question from policy, and the two rarely point the same way: every distributor fee compared.
Frequently asked questions
Does DistroKid allow AI music?
Yes. DistroKid accepts music made with AI tools provided you own 100% of the rights, do not impersonate anyone, and are not mass-uploading spam. AI-generated audio, lyrics or composition must be declared through AI Credits, which Spotify and Apple Music show to listeners.
Does TuneCore allow AI music?
Only AI-assisted music. TuneCore states it will not distribute works that are 100% AI-generated, and supports generative AI only where the underlying model used fully licensed training data. Tracks blending AI with substantial human contribution are assessed case by case.
Does CD Baby allow AI music?
No. CD Baby cannot distribute AI-generated content even when commercially licensed, and even when only part of the recording is AI. AI used purely as a production tool — mastering, mixing, stem separation — on human-created music is still fine.
Does LANDR allow AI music?
Yes, with limits: mandatory disclosure, a cap of 12 songs a month, and exclusion from YouTube Content ID, Meta, TikTok, Deezer, Pandora and Tencent.
What is the difference between AI-assisted and AI-generated music?
AI-assisted means you created the music and AI helped produce it — mastering, stems, pitch correction. AI-generated means a prompt produced the audio itself. Every distributor accepts the first; only some accept the second.
Will my AI track be rejected if I disclose it?
Not by a distributor that accepts AI music — disclosure is required there, not penalised, and platforms have said transparency does not cost placement. Undeclared AI caught later is what leads to removals and closed accounts.
Can I upload Suno music to a distributor?
To DistroKid, LANDR or Amuse, yes, with disclosure and subject to their limits. Not to TuneCore or CD Baby, both of which exclude fully AI-generated tracks. You also need a paid Suno plan, because free-tier output is licensed for personal, non-commercial use only.
Do I need a distributor to sell AI music at all?
No. Distributors exist to place music on streaming platforms. Selling direct from your own storefront involves no distributor, no upload review and no AI policy — and it pays far more per listener.
Why do distributors have different AI policies?
Because they carry different risk. A distributor is answerable to the streaming platforms it delivers to, and each has made its own judgement about training-data provenance, rights ownership and spam. There is no industry standard yet.
Will these policies change?
Almost certainly. Every policy here was checked in August 2026 and several changed during that year. Re-check before you pay for an annual plan on the strength of one.
The bottom line
Three of the five distributors here will take a fully AI-generated track, and two will not. The single most useful thing you can do before paying anyone is work out which category your music is actually in — because "allows AI music" means something different at every one of them, and the version you are is what decides whether your release goes live or comes down.
If you would rather not have the question decided by someone else's policy at all, the 7-day trial gives you a storefront that has no AI policy to fall foul of. Card verified, not charged, $19.99/month afterwards only if you stay.