Why Does Creating Value Get Harder as Production Gets Easier?
At the beginning of 2025, around 10,000 fully AI-generated tracks were being uploaded to Deezer every day.
By June 2026, that figure had climbed to 90,000. On peak days, more than half of all newly uploaded tracks were generated entirely by AI.
Yet those tracks accounted for only 1 to 3 percent of total streams.
Worse still, a significant share of that limited listening did not come from genuine audience demand. It came from artificial streaming and manipulation attempts.
Deezer reported that in 2025, as much as 85 percent of streams generated by fully AI-created tracks were fraudulent.
Production increased ninefold.
Attention did not.
So why is value creation becoming harder precisely when production is getting easier?
So What Is Really Going On?
This is not just a music industry story.
AI, automation, and digital tools are expanding production capacity across virtually every sector. More products, more content, more proposals, more campaigns, more choices.
But volume is not translating into value at the same rate.
Because producing something and creating value are not the same thing.
The ability to produce faster, cheaper, and at scale remains an advantage. But it is no longer enough.
Value comes from understanding the right need, standing apart from alternatives, earning trust, and securing a lasting place in the customer's limited field of attention.
A company may increase its output, send more proposals, or publish more content.
But unless it can explain why customers choose it, why they return, and why they continue to trust it, all it has done is increase activity.
Today's scarcest resources are no longer production capacity:
Attention, trust, and meaning.
And yet, most traditional KPI systems still measure activity:
How many products were manufactured?
How many proposals were sent?
How many customers were contacted?
How many pieces of content were published?
All of these can be measured. But an activity metric is not necessarily a value metric.
Preparing one hundred proposals and converting only three, publishing a thousand pieces of content without being remembered, or increasing capacity while losing customer loyalty should not be called success.
The problem is not the report. The problem is the company's definition of success.
Every output that fails to create a meaningful response eventually stops being capacity and becomes noise.
Now, Let's Pull a Rabbit Out of the Hat
In a world where production is becoming easier, companies need to redesign not only their processes but also the way they define and measure performance.
Traditional KPIs tell us how much was produced. The next generation of KPIs must tell us how much of that production created a meaningful response.
Perhaps companies now need a different performance metric.
Value Conversion Rate
I call it the Value Conversion Rate.
It measures how much of a company's total output is converted into customer attention, interest, preference, trust, and repeat business.
Because the real management challenge is no longer limited to increasing production capacity. It is managing the loss between production and value.
Output → Attention → Interest → Preference → Trust → Loyalty
Management's role is to identify where output is lost along that chain.
A system that produces high output but converts little of it into value is not successful.
It is merely busy.
Value Leakage Rate
The Value Leakage Rate shows where output falls out of the value chain.
If a product attracts attention but fails to win preference, the problem may not be production. It may lie in positioning, pricing, differentiation, or the quality of the offer.
If the product is purchased but not purchased again, the leakage may be occurring at the trust or customer experience stage.
If a proposal generates interest but does not convert into a sale, the company may be failing to make its value visible enough.
Companies measure production volume in extraordinary detail. They rarely measure value leakage with the same precision.
Yet increasing production without locating the leakage is simply pouring more water into a leaking bucket.
Noise Ratio
The Noise Ratio measures the share of total output that creates no meaningful response.
Noise Ratio = Output that creates no meaningful response / Total output
When this ratio rises, the organisation may appear busier. There are more meetings, more reports, more presentations, and more activity.
But unless those activities create attention, sales, preference, or trust, the company is not progressing. It is merely moving.
Because movement and progress are not the same thing.
Selection Quality Index
The Selection Quality Index measures not how many ideas are generated, but how accurate the organisation is in choosing which ideas to execute.
AI can generate hundreds of concepts, designs, campaigns, products, and solution alternatives.
But producing one hundred options does not mean you have found the right one.
The real management skill lies in identifying which option addresses a genuine need, can actually be executed, and has the potential to create value.
A new KPI framework should therefore answer four fundamental questions:
How much of our output did we convert into value?
Where did that value leak away?
How much of our production became noise?
How accurately did we choose what to pursue?
Management's role is no longer simply to expand capacity. It is to turn capacity into choice, choice into response, and response into lasting value.
From Production Advantage to Selection Advantage
The strongest companies of the future will not be the ones that produce the most.
They will be the ones capable of identifying what is genuinely valuable among everything they produce, developing it, and turning it into lasting value.
Because in an age of production abundance, competitive advantage no longer comes from capacity alone.
The real edge lies in separating the right from the wrong, the valuable from the ordinary, and what truly resonates from what merely adds noise.
The management model of the future will therefore depend less on producing more and more on choosing better, developing with greater purpose, and converting output into genuine value.
Competitive advantage will come less from capacity and more from judgement; less from speed and more from selectivity; less from production and more from the ability to create meaning.
EDITORIAL NOTE
This article draws on data published by Deezer between January 2025 and July 2026 regarding fully AI-generated music.
The term "fully AI-generated track" refers to music classified as entirely synthetic by Deezer's proprietary detection system. Music in which AI was used only as an assisting tool at certain stages is not included in this category.
The figure exceeding 50 percent refers to newly delivered tracks on peak days in June 2026. It does not mean that half of Deezer's entire music catalogue is AI-generated.
The figure of 1 to 3 percent refers to the share of total streams generated by fully AI-created tracks. Deezer also stated that, in 2025, up to 85 percent of those streams were identified as fraudulent and excluded from royalty calculations.
The application of music-industry data to broader questions of business management, corporate performance, and KPI design represents the author's managerial interpretation.
The concepts of Value Conversion Rate, Value Leakage Rate, Noise Ratio, Selection Quality Index, and the framework Output → Attention → Interest → Preference → Trust → Loyalty are original management concepts developed by Orkun Akçasarı.
SOURCES AND LINKS
1.
Deezer Newsroom — Deezer Deploys Cutting-Edge AI Detection Tool for Music
Streaming, 24 January 2025
Deezer's announcement that approximately 10,000 fully AI-generated tracks were
being delivered to the platform each day, representing around 10 percent of
daily uploads.
2.
Deezer Newsroom — 28% of All Delivered Music Is Now Fully AI-Generated, 11
September 2025
Deezer's announcement that daily AI-generated track uploads had exceeded 30,000
and represented more than 28 percent of all newly delivered music.
https://newsroom-deezer.com/2025/09/28-fully-ai-generated-music/
3.
Deezer Newsroom — Deezer Confirms Demonetization of up to 85% of AI-Music
Streams Due to Fraud, 29 January 2026
Data showing that daily AI-generated track uploads had reached approximately
60,000 and that up to 85 percent of streams attributed to fully AI-generated
music had been identified as fraudulent.
https://newsroom-deezer.com/2026/01/ai-generated-music-deezer-selling-detection-tool/
4.
Deezer Newsroom — AI-Generated Tracks Now Represent 44% of All New Uploaded
Music, 20 April 2026
Deezer's announcement that approximately 75,000 AI-generated tracks were being
uploaded each day, representing 44 percent of new uploads and 1 to 3 percent of
total streams.
https://newsroom-deezer.com/2026/04/ai-generated-tracks-represent-44-of-new-uploaded-music/
5.
Deezer Newsroom — AI Music Tops 50% of Daily Uploads on Deezer, 21 July 2026
Data showing that daily AI-generated track uploads had reached approximately
90,000, exceeded 50 percent of new uploads on peak days, and continued to
represent only 1 to 3 percent of total streams.
https://newsroom-deezer.com/2026/07/ai-music-exceeds-50-percent-daily-uploads-deezer/