AI-composed, AI-sung song tops South Korea's Melon Top 100 chart for the first time

A song written with AI tools and sung by a generated voice has reached No. 1 on the Top 100 chart of Melon, South Korea's largest music streaming platform, for the first time. Mureumur's "Did You Become the Adult You Dreamed Of?" topped the Melon Top 100 as of 5 p.m. local time on Nov 13, according to KBS and Yonhap. The rock ballad came out in June. Mureumur says they wrote the lyrics and planned the song, used AI tools to compose it and created the singing voice with a generative music AI. Listeners in their 30s made up 36% of the audience, followed by those in their 40s at 30%, 20s at 19% and 50s at 11%, according to Melon.

The track climbed as high as No. 3 on Melon in October before reaching the top spot. Its label, Glory Wave, has not registered the song with the Korea Music Copyright Association, so it collects no standard songwriting royalties, the Kyunghyang Shinmun reported. The milestone is likely to sharpen the debate over how AI-made music should be credited and paid. The news also traveled abroad: a Japanese X user's post reading "An AI-made song is No. 1 on Melon — give me a break" drew more than 190,000 views within hours, with replies split between "they don't see AI as bad" and listeners who said they had played the song on repeat.