New Delhi, May 13 -- For strict institutional gatekeepers, Billboard has been quite lax about allowing fake artists on its charts. By November, several AI performers were featured, including country music's Breaking Rust and R&B's Xania Monet.

It's the kind of casual absurdity that AI music startups like Suno are hoping will become, well, casual. "The technology finally allows for billions of people to be creative, to have the fruits of their labor, to feel fulfillment in a different way," Suno co-founder Mikey Shulman told Forbes in April.

But the inclusion of those fruits-AI creations-on the music charts is an existential emergency signal, raising logistical questions for the music industry. The good news? Answering them correctly sho...