But in the midst of the principles and aesthetics of soundalikes spreading throughout the music industry, there are looming difficulties for the practice. iTunes released a new style guide this past month, setting out rules regarding which songs will be allowed onto its service, with very explicit language banning soundalikes with what Apple calls “deceptive” artist or song names.

“They never really allowed you to cite another artist in the title of a song,” explains Ari Herstand, a Los Angeles-based songwriter, journalist, and actor who has covered issues of digital music extensively. “So when you submit a cover song, you can’t say ‘Originally performed by Ed Sheeran’ or whatever. However, some artists were slipping through and doing that. They’re starting to crack down harder on that kind of stuff.”

He quoted from a section of the guide that explicitly rules out the kind of soundalike cover songs that are so omnipresent on Spotify. “Album titles or artist names must not be deceptive or misleading,” he reads. “Do not use genres, popular song lyrics, or the original artist names as the album title, track title, or artist.”

This rules out titling songs and artists in the search-friendly “Im At A Payphone” style that exists on the more liberal streaming services. “A lot of these companies that built up their business on tributes and soundalikes and karaoke versions are going to start to take a hit,” Herstand muses.

As if that didn’t make things difficult enough, cover songs that sound too close to the original are actually not allowed on iTunes at all—though, Herstand says, the company almost never enforces this rule.

Ari Herstand

“I haven’t heard of anyone’s cover songs that sound so similar to the original that they’re getting ripped down, but iTunes is not going through their songs and literally listening to them,” he explains. “I think they just put it there so that if they start to get complaints about a song that’s confusing, then they have the power to take it down if they feel they need to. That’s to prevent customers from accidentally downloading the wrong version and being upset.”

Cory Robbins, for one, is strongly in favor of the new guidelines.

“It’s good that iTunes is now tightening up their rules about this,” he opines. “If people want to buy a soundalike, that’s fine. But they should know, and I think it wasn’t clear to a lot of people that they were buying a soundalike until after they bought it. I think iTunes making it a little more strict and having rules about how soundalikes are listed will be good for consumers.”

Streaming services like Spotify are far more forgiving than iTunes when it comes to these practices. (Even Rhapsody, which has in theory banned soundalikes for years, still has them). However, iTunes’ new rules are likely to have a ripple effect. When artists add their songs to digital outlets, Herstand explains, they almost always do it through a digital distributor. These places submit the song everywhere at once, and demand the song and artist be called the same thing for all the places they submit. Thus, if certain naming practices are ruled out for iTunes, those conventions will likely make their way to Spotify and other streaming services as well.

In addition, Apple is starting its own streaming service this spring, and it seems likely that this new service will have the same harsh attitude towards soundalikes as its sister business. This could not be confirmed, though, as iTunes refused to comment for Cuepoint on the new rules. Digital distributor TuneCore was unresponsive as well, despite long discouraging soundalikes and following the same restrictive song-naming rules as iTunes.

Likewise, representatives for Spotify repeatedly refused to talk about any issues related to soundalikes. It is documented that those songs can be very lucrative for the service, which may explain their reluctance. To get an idea of the scope, note that just one tribute act, the previously-mentioned Led Zepagain, was making six figures a year from Spotify streams up until the real Zeppelin joined the service in late 2013. For context, that’s about as much in a year as a chart-topper like Iggy Azalea makes from the company in a month.

As opposed to tribute bands, the legions of anonymous pop clones take a smaller individual bite out of hit songs. A close look at “Payphone” on Spotify reveals that a handful of soundalike versions have collectively garnered over 300,000 streams. That works out, at Spotify’s famously stingy (and ever-changing) royalty rates, to about $1,800. While that might not seem like much, dishing that out for copies of every hit song past, present, and future may ultimately take up a noticeable chunk of the company’s rapidly increasing annual payout.