Experts spoke about the impact of AI on the music market in Russia

For real artists, songs created by a neural network create financial risk and a struggle for audience attention. Ilya Rusyaev, a business consultant and founder of the Rusyaev Club business community, told Izvestia on February 19.

According to him, at the beginning of 2026, Russian streaming faced a phenomenon that a couple of years ago seemed like an experiment for enthusiasts. Now, songs created by the neural network become chart leaders and are distributed through short videos and algorithmic recommendations. As Rusyaev noted, this is a full-fledged shift in the economics of music production and promotion.

"Generative tools allow you to produce dozens of track variants, test them on an audience, and scale what is gaining listeners. For the algorithms of streaming platforms, it makes no difference who is behind the track, a human or a neural network. What matters is the behavior of the listener, listening to the end, re-enabling, adding to playlists. In this logic, AI content gets the same chances of reaching the top as traditional releases," said the business consultant.

Rusyaev added that there are two specific risks for real artists. The first is related to competition for attention, the second risk is financial in nature, since most streaming services use the following revenue distribution model: the more releases claim the total royalty fund, the less amount is accounted for per listen.

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As noted by the modern Russian composer Turgut Gabriel, for streaming platforms, songs created by a neural network are a precedent that indicates a change of epochs. Algorithms have learned to calculate audience tastes more accurately than producers.

"Here we face a bitter paradox. <...> AI gives the young author what he could only dream of before: studio quality, orchestral arrangements, perfectly calibrated vocals, and all this without much investment," the musician told Izvestia.

However, according to the composer, other difficulties arise along with this. When everyone gets access, the space quickly fills up with a huge amount of content. As a result, competition becomes extremely high, and the audience's attention becomes a scarce resource. The platform's algorithms, focused primarily on user retention, equally promote both high-quality works and a massive stream of similar tracks, without distinguishing between artistic value and formal compliance with metrics, the expert concluded.

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The share of Russians who are afraid of the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and neural networks has increased to 27% by the end of 2025, compared to 15% a year earlier. As clarified on February 17, AI has been ranked first among the most disturbing areas of scientific progress for the third year in a row. At the same time, the gap with other categories has increased significantly in 2025.

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