For the first time, Morgan Stanley’s annual survey of Americans’ audio habits asked listeners about their engagement with AI-generated music, and the results are already stirring debate across the music industry. While traditional streaming platforms continue to report minimal human interaction with AI tracks, the survey suggests that younger listeners are encountering and consuming AI music far more frequently—just not in the usual places.
Younger Listeners Are Driving AI Music Engagement
According to analyst Benjamin Swinburne, the findings were unexpectedly strong among younger age groups. “What we found surprised us, with 50–60% of listeners 18–44 reporting 2.5–3 hours per week of AI music listening,” he wrote, as reported by Sherwood. A closer look at the data shows that 60% of respondents aged 18–29 reported listening to AI music for an average of three hours per week. Among those aged 30–44, 55% reported listening about 2.5 hours weekly, while engagement drops sharply for listeners aged 45–64, with only 25% reporting just over an hour per week. These numbers suggest that AI-generated music is already embedded in the everyday listening habits of Gen Z and younger millennials, even if older audiences remain more skeptical or less exposed to it.
Discovery Is Happening on Social Platforms, Not Streaming Apps
One of the most revealing aspects of the survey is where this listening is happening. YouTube and TikTok were flagged as the most common sources of AI-generated music, pointing to a discovery ecosystem driven by short-form video, algorithmic feeds, and viral trends. This platform shift may explain why these results appear to contradict what streaming services have reported so far. AI music may be thriving in social and visual environments where novelty, speed, and experimentation are rewarded, rather than in curated music libraries built around artists and catalogs.
By contrast, streaming platform Deezer has stated that fully AI-generated tracks now account for 34% of new uploads to its service, yet they represent just 0.5% of total streams—up to 70% of which are believed to be fraudulent, driven by bots rather than real listeners. That gap suggests that while AI music is flooding traditional platforms in terms of volume, it is not yet attracting sustained, organic engagement from users there.
What This Means for the Future of AI Music
Taken together, the data points to a growing disconnect between where AI music is being created and uploaded, and where people are actually discovering and listening to it. Morgan Stanley’s survey suggests that for Gen Z and younger millennials, AI music is part of the everyday digital content mix on social platforms, even if it hasn’t yet found a strong foothold on traditional streaming services. As AI tools continue to evolve and spread, the industry may need to rethink not just how AI music is licensed and regulated, but also where its audiences are truly forming.
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