In an opinion piece for Music Business Worldwide, Deviate Digital CEO Sammy Andrews argues that the music industry's AI debate has focused too narrowly on ownership and payment, while overlooking a more fundamental shift: whether streaming data still reflects genuine audience taste or merely mirrors what recommendation algorithms have already pushed onto listeners. She contends that as discovery moves from browsing platforms to conversational AI assistants, a new and less accountable form of gatekeeping is emerging, one that shapes individual preferences at massive scale while offering little transparency about how its suggestions are formed.

Andrews cites the growing integration of AI into music discovery, such as Spotify's presence within ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews reducing click-through rates, as evidence that "ask and receive" is replacing "search and click". She describes testing three popular AI tools for music recommendations, finding they gave confident suggestions but vague, untraceable justifications, drawing on blended data from journalism, criticism and fan communities without attributing sources. She warns that chart positions, already influenced by playlist placement, could become further removed from genuine listener demand as the "bottleneck" shifts from algorithmic playlists to AI prompt responses, with platforms holding unused data that could distinguish intentional listening from passive, algorithm-driven plays.