Australia's ARIA charts now require a human author. The next market is already queued.

From Friday, Australia's ARIA charts will exclude wholly AI-generated songs under a "substantially human made" threshold, marking the first operational rollout of an IFPI-backed principle pushed to 20+ other chart programs.

ARIA's Friday rule is not a blanket AI music ban. It is a chart-eligibility test built on a "substantially human made" threshold that keeps AI-assisted tracks in play while excluding wholly AI-generated songs from the Australian Recording Industry Association's main singles and album charts.

Under ARIA's updated code of practice, a track must be "substantially human made" to qualify. Wholly AI-generated recordings are out. AI-assisted work remains eligible so long as the human authorship is real and the release raises no signs of streaming or chart manipulation. ARIA chief executive Annabelle Herd has framed the rule as protecting chart slots for human artists: a chart that rewarded unlicensed AI output would "undercut the very basis of the recorded music we exist to present." It is not a verdict on the technology.

The threshold is already doing real work on the live chart. Gold Coast DJ and producer Josh Fawaz's dance cover of Madonna's "Like A Prayer" credits generative AI for its drums and vocals. It peaked at number two in May and sits at number four on ARIA's top 20 Australian singles. Under the new rule it stays in, because it is AI-assisted rather than wholly AI-generated. A top-five track surviving the policy is the clearest evidence of the line ARIA is drawing, which is authorship rather than tooling.

Peking Duk's Adam Hyde told the Junee Southern Cross the technology is "using our stuff" and "removing the human experience from life." His phrase, "get it out," is sharper than the trade-body line, and the displacement concern is part of why the rule is moving at all. Smoothing it into consensus would misrepresent the room.

In July the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry released global principles for the eligibility of AI-developed recordings in official charts. IFPI is now rolling those guidelines out to chart programs in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia, and has asked more than 20 other official chart programs across Europe and the Pacific to adopt them. Australia is the first market to flip the operational switch on those principles.

Enforcement is the open question. "Substantially human made" is a soft standard. ARIA's own FAQ leaves the definition to the artist and the label, with the chart operator reserving the right to review. Without a published scoring rubric, an audit-trail requirement, or a dispute panel, the rule is a marker rather than a gate. The next test case will probably not be a wholly AI-generated upload. It will be a borderline AI-assisted track with a credit dispute, and whether ARIA can adjudicate that without rewriting the rule.

The chart rankings flip Friday. The harder question, what counts as a human author on a streaming-era credit sheet, is now an open problem for every chart program being asked to follow ARIA's lead.