SAMPLEDThe AI chart ban is spreading — and "substantially human made" is about to be your paperwork
Australia moved first. New Zealand is debating it now. Whatever your country does, you should be able to prove a human made your record.
From late August, songs have needed to be "substantially human made" to qualify for Australia''s main chart, after ARIA moved to exclude wholly AI-generated tracks 3 (opens in a new tab). Tracks that use AI in a supporting role stay eligible 1 (opens in a new tab). A week later, New Zealand''s industry was publicly working through the same question 6 (opens in a new tab).
That is how standards travel. One body writes a rule, everyone else borrows the language.
The line they are drawing
Not "no AI." The distinction is between AI as a tool and AI as the author. Stem separation, noise reduction, mastering assistants, and pitch correction sit on the tool side. A prompt that returns a finished song does not 2 (opens in a new tab).
The problem is that nobody can hear the difference reliably. So enforcement becomes a declaration: you tell the chart, the distributor, or the platform what you used, and you are accountable for the answer.
Start keeping a "human made" file
For every release, save:
- Session files with history. A DAW project with dated versions and a take folder is the strongest evidence a person played this.
- Raw tracking material. Unedited vocal takes, room mic files, a phone video of the guitar pass.
- Lyric drafts. Handwritten pages, notes app screenshots, revisions with timestamps.
- A tools log. One line per release: which AI tools touched it, and for what. "Stem separation on the sample; mastering assistant on the final." Boring and enormously useful later.
- Split sheets naming humans, signed and dated.
Five minutes per song. It protects chart eligibility, distributor disputes, sync clearance, and any future registration rule.
Where this lands next
Expect distributors to add an AI disclosure checkbox at upload, expect DSPs to tag rather than remove, and expect sync licensors to ask for warranties that a human wrote the work. The countries copying Australia will copy the phrase too, because "substantially human made" is vague enough to enforce and specific enough to defend.
If your process is genuinely human, none of this costs you anything except a folder. If it is not, now is a good time to find out what your distributor is going to ask.