Nearly 40 Percent of New Songs Now Involve AI, SubmitHub Study Finds

Music platform SubmitHub has published the results of an analysis of more than a million tracks released in July 2026, finding that nearly four in ten new songs involved artificial intelligence in some form. It is the first study of this scale to measure the phenomenon across the music industry, built on a dedicated tool for detecting AI in audio.

The scale of the trend

SubmitHub is a platform through which artists submit their tracks to playlists, music blogs, and curators. In the summer of 2026 the company launched SH Labs, a tool designed specifically to detect the presence of artificial intelligence in audio recordings. The analysis covered more than a million tracks released in July, making it one of the largest attempts yet to measure the real scale of AI use in music, rather than relying on estimates based on artists' own declarations.

A result of 38.5 percent means that nearly every other new song had some contact with generative artificial intelligence during its creation. More than half of that group, 23.2 percent of all tracks analyzed, was generated entirely by AI, without significant human involvement. The remaining 15.3 percent were recordings in which producers edited, mixed, or otherwise manually processed an AI-generated audio layer.

Creators unaware of AI use

The most troubling finding of the study is the share of artists who had no idea their music contained AI-generated elements. Among creators whose tracks SH Labs flagged as showing traces of artificial intelligence, 31 percent had previously told the platform they used no AI tools. SubmitHub attributes this to possible unwitting use of the technology during production or audio processing, for example through plugins and sample libraries that themselves rely on generative models.

This distinction has practical consequences. Many streaming and distribution platforms are already introducing requirements to disclose AI use when releasing music, and unknowingly omitting such a declaration could carry consequences for artists in the future, even though they acted in good faith.

I think the future of AI-assisted music is disclosure. People should get to decide for themselves whether they want to engage with music generated by artificial intelligence - Jason Grishkoff, founder of SubmitHub

Our job is to give them enough information to make that choice - Jason Grishkoff, founder of SubmitHub

Industry response

SH Labs is already being used by several music platforms, including Bandcamp, Traxsource, and the German collecting society GEMA. That shows the problem of detecting and labeling AI-generated music has stopped being a theoretical discussion and has become part of the everyday infrastructure of music distribution.

SubmitHub's findings fit into a broader pattern of tension between the music industry and generative AI providers. Streaming services and labels have spent months looking for ways to label, limit the reach of, or remove machine-generated tracks from charts altogether, while collecting societies are locked in legal disputes with companies developing music models over the use of copyrighted recordings for training.

What it means for creators

For independent musicians and producers, the SubmitHub study is a signal that keeping track of production tools now requires more care than it did just a year ago. Mixing plugins, sample generators, and automated mastering tools increasingly rely on generative models, even when they are not marketed outright as AI products. Artists who want to avoid unknowingly breaching disclosure rules should check the documentation of the software they use.

For the Polish music market, where digital distribution runs mainly through the same global platforms used in the West, this means similar transparency requirements will sooner or later reach domestic artists and publishers too. If the 38.5 percent figure holds over the coming months, it could speed up the introduction of mandatory AI-content labeling on Polish streaming services and music catalogs as well.

SubmitHub said it plans to continue monitoring in the coming months, which will show whether the share of AI-assisted music keeps rising, stabilizes, or starts to decline as regulations and detection tools take hold. The company has not said whether it plans to make SH Labs available to a wider range of platforms beyond its current partners.