Imogen Hale
Imogen Hale reports on the business side of AI music — licensing terms, royalties, and copyright — reading the fine print so working creators don't get burned.
What AI Regulation Actually Asks For: A Songwriter's Ledger, One Motion at a Time
I spent a Tuesday afternoon doing something unglamorous: reading a royalty statement out loud to nobody, line by line, trying to find the number that matters.
Read signal →
AI Music Generation Won't Make You a Musician — And That's the Point
The most useful thing about AI music generation is that it will not turn you into a musician. That is not a knock. It is the entire reason it matters to you.
Read signal →
Reading the Room: What a Single Executive Appointment Tells You About Merlin's AI Licensing Play
A press release lands in your inbox at 9am on a Tuesday. Someone you've half-heard-of takes a title you've never seen before at an organization you license through. Most people archive it.
Read signal →
Vibe Coding Is a Better Release Tool Than Another Playlist Pitch
A playable browser game that loops your single as its soundtrack will pull more fan attention this month than another cold pitch to a playlist curator who owes you nothing. That is the claim.
Read signal →
AI Voice Cloning Fraud Doesn't Break In — It Gets Waved Through
In early 2024, a finance worker at engineering firm Arup joined a video call with people who looked and sounded like his CFO and several colleagues. He'd been suspicious of an earlier email.
Read signal →
Suno AI API Audio Export: What You Actually Get Back, and How to Store It
The generation call is the easy part. You send a prompt, you get a job ID, you poll or wait for a webhook, and eventually a track exists.
Read signal →
The Album Launch Campaign Is a Story Music Marketing Keeps Telling Itself
Sometime last year a legacy rock act rolled out an album with a bracket. Not a tour bracket — a World Cup-style knockout tournament, band members captaining fictional teams, fans voting through a…
Read signal →
Whose Name Goes on the Track? AI Music Policy and the Composer Identity Problem
There is a field in every distributor's upload form marked Composer. Sometimes it is required, sometimes it is not, and for a fully AI-generated instrumental it is the field where an honest person…
Read signal →
Can You Trademark a Voice? The Idea Is Older and Thinner Than You Think
Somewhere in a filing queue at the trademark office, an artist is trying to register the sound of their own throat.
Read signal →