Where the AI Music Went
SubmitHub banned pure AI-generated music in September. In October its founder, Jason Grishkoff, published what happened next in a post called “Analyzing September's genre shake-up”. Read it in full if you have ten minutes. Every number below comes from that post.
Full disclosure: I still curate a few playlists on SubmitHub, though I've been winding that down, and I run my own submission service, the Jukebox. Weigh what follows with that in mind.
What changed in September
Two things landed in the same month. SubmitHub banned pure AI-generated music, enforced with its 85%+ AI-likelihood cutoff. It also rolled out a new genre detector. Keep the second one in mind, because it affects how much weight the genre numbers can carry.
The 57% drop
AI-flagged submissions fell 57% from August to September. (About 54% once you adjust for September being a shorter month; SubmitHub reports both.) As a share of everything submitted, they went from about 14% to 6.5%. Over the same stretch, non-AI submissions rose 2.8%.
So the rest of the platform kept growing while one category of song fell by more than half.
I'm writing "fell after the ban" on purpose. The data shows the timing. It can't isolate the cause.
Where the losses landed
By song count, four genres took the biggest AI losses:
That's more than 1,300 songs across four genres alone.
By share of each genre's submissions:
Even after the drop, Dance Pop at 27% and Country at 18% still carry the highest AI share.
What the numbers can't tell you yet
The genre detector changed in the same month as the ban, so some of the movement between genres could be the detector sorting songs differently. SubmitHub says the numbers aren't final. Treat the genre shifts as directional. The overall AI percentages are the solid part.
Two more limits. The post counts songs, so I can't tell you how many people are behind them. And the data doesn't say how tracks that mix AI and human work fared, so I won't guess.
Their platform, their call
SubmitHub gets to decide what goes in front of its curators. I'm not arguing they got it wrong, and publishing the data was more than they owed anyone.
But more than 1,300 songs in four genres had a door in August and didn't have one in September. Those songs will get pitched somewhere. What I care about is what that somewhere should look like.
What a fair door looks like
This is my standard. Nobody handed it down, and I'd hold any service to it, mine included.
A real listen. The whole song, heard by a person who answers for the decision.
Published disclosure. The rules on AI are in writing, on the page, before anyone pays. If AI-generated music is welcome, say so. If it isn't, say that.
Payment never buys placement. The money pays for the listen. It doesn't move the outcome.
One option
The Jukebox is the door I built for AI music on those terms. I listen to every submission in full, and payment never influences selection. October submissions close Friday, October 9.
Josh, Founder, JG BeatsLab
