1. Chart manipulation is rampant
The iTunes/Apple Music charts can be gamed easily by buying sales or streams.
“The iTunes chart primarily focuses on sales velocity, not streams, and so I wonder how useful that is in 2026 and how easy it is to game.” – bobthepanda
“Rick Beato had an episode about AI music where he talked about how easy it is to game the iTunes charts. So few people buy music from iTunes that it's relatively cheap to buy your way onto the charts.” – patwolf
“Pretty common for authors to get people to pre‑order their books so when they go on sale they top the chart for that day.” – slyall
2. Albums are becoming experiences, not just collections of singles
Artists now design full‑length visual albums and massive tours to give fans something AI can’t replicate.
“Artists have actually been moving back to the full album with goodies, even in mainstream pop with Beyoncé, Rosalia, RAYE, Charli XCX… Tours are becoming larger productions to experience an album intensely.” – bobthepanda
“One can still buy artisan albums created by independent singers/bands. But they tend to get lost in the marketing/influencer noise and thus do not get worldwide success.” – warkdarrior > “The death of radio has really meant that singles are declining in utility, especially in our social‑media era where the songs that pop off an album are not necessarily the record‑designated singles.” – bobthepanda
3. AI‑generated music dominates charts and streams (often fraudulently)
AI tracks are flooding services, inflating chart positions, and many streams are bots.
“Up to 70 % of streams of AI music on Deezer were fraudulent!” – cdrini (link) > “The top 40 has always been riddled with garbage… AI can now mimic that garbage and do it cheaper.” – everdrive
“I can tell you that myself (and many others) still create concept albums as our primary format. The choice is still there for any listener that cares about albums as a format.” – soundworlds > “If you think that AI generated beige music is nerdcore, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” – skeeter2020
4. Listening habits have shifted to background/ambient consumption
Many users treat music as background noise rather than a curated experience, preferring endless playlists over full albums.
“I mostly listen to AI‑generated music. 8 out of 10 of my top listens in the last 180 days are AI‑generated.” – testycool > “Music has been a product of its form factor for a long time… commercially distributed mass‑consumption music is influenced by its packaging and distribution.” – leviathant
“I just checked Spotify; it has 368k followers and at least one song has over 1M streams.” – HardwareLust
“I think that’s probably the crux of where there’s conflict here… I just have it for background noise when I’m working, exercising, doing chores.” – dolebirchwood