Technology · Culture

The World Cup has triggered a flood of AI-generated music, with a streaming platform reporting that most unofficial tournament anthems were written by a machine rather than a person.

Most Unofficial World Cup Songs Are Now Made by AI, Deezer Finds. (Photo internet reproduction)

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Every World Cup brings a wave of songs hoping to become the unofficial anthem of the tournament. This year, most of them were not written by humans at all.

That finding comes from Deezer, a French music-streaming service that competes with the likes of Spotify. For a reader abroad, the short version is that artificial intelligence has quietly taken over a corner of pop culture.

In the run-up to the tournament, Deezer counted more than two hundred and seventy tracks simply titled World Cup 2026. More than seven in ten of them were flagged as AI-generated.

The pattern held across languages and countries. The company found similar shares among songs named after the tournament in English, French and Portuguese.

How much AI-generated music is flooding Brazil

Brazil, one of Deezer’s biggest markets, was a striking case. The platform counted more than one hundred and eighty songs in albums called Copa do Mundo 2026, the Portuguese name for the event.

Of those, around seven in ten were detected as machine-made. In France the share was even higher, at well over eight in ten of the songs named after the tournament.

These World Cup songs are a small piece of a far larger wave. Deezer says it now receives around seventy-five thousand fully AI-generated tracks every single day.

That figure amounts to close to half of everything uploaded to the platform. A senior Deezer executive said it has never been easier to make a song and post it, so a global event was always going to draw opportunists.

A few of these tracks do break through. The best-known example is a viral French anthem called Imbattables, made by an AI music creator and watched millions of times across social media.

Such hits remain the exception rather than the rule. For every viral anthem there are hundreds of machine-made songs that almost nobody ever hears.

Why the songs make so little money

For all the volume, these tracks barely register with listeners. Deezer says AI-generated music accounts for only one to three percent of the streams on its service.

The money side is murkier still. The company says up to eighty-five percent of the streams that AI tracks do attract are linked to fraud, and it strips those out before paying any royalties.

Fraud here usually means fake plays generated by bots to harvest royalty payments. By demonetising them, Deezer aims to stop AI uploads from quietly draining money away from human artists.

The platform also pulls detected AI tracks from its recommendations. That makes it very unlikely any of these World Cup songs will reach more than a handful of listeners.

A wider fight over honesty in music

The debate is shifting from removal toward transparency. Deezer is the only major streaming service that automatically detects and labels AI-made music, and others are starting to follow.

Listeners appear to want that honesty. A survey the company ran across eight countries, including Brazil, found that most people believe fully AI-generated music should be clearly labelled.

The platform has gone a step further for the public. It recently launched a free online tool, available in many languages, that lets people check whether their own playlists contain AI-made tracks.

For a foreign reader, the episode is a neat snapshot of a bigger shift. A cultural ritual as old as the World Cup anthem is now a testing ground for who, or what, gets credit for making music.

The stakes stretch well beyond one tournament. How platforms handle this wave will shape how much of the streaming economy still flows to human musicians in the years ahead.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did Deezer find about World Cup songs?

It found that most unofficial 2026 World Cup songs on its platform were generated by artificial intelligence. More than seventy percent of the tracks titled World Cup 2026 were flagged as AI-made.

How big is the AI music wave in Brazil?

Deezer counted more than one hundred and eighty songs in albums called Copa do Mundo 2026, of which around seventy-one percent were detected as AI-generated. Brazil is one of the platform’s largest markets.

Do these AI songs earn money?

Very little. AI tracks draw only one to three percent of streams, and Deezer says up to eighty-five percent of those streams are linked to fraud and excluded from royalty payments.