Thomas Whitfield
How to Spot AI-Generated Music on the Charts (and Why the Usual Tells Keep Failing)
The advice you have heard is simple: you can always tell when a track is AI-generated music. Something in the voice will crack the wrong way, the lyrics will read like a horoscope, the artist will…
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What Happens When an AI Music Generation Startup Gets Acquired: The Mechanism Behind the Consolidation
The founder posts one last message in the company Slack — "grateful for every one of you, more soon" — and then the channel goes read-only.
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AI Music Labeling Standards Won't Tell You What You Think They Do
A track lands on a streaming service. Somewhere in its metadata sits a flag: this was made with AI, or this was made by a human.
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Can a Distributor Actually Get You Onto International Music Festivals?
Here is the question, and I think most independent Indian artists have asked some version of it at 1am after paying an annual distribution fee: does a distributor actually get you anywhere near an…
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The Rolling Stones Went to Roblox: What Legacy Acts Are Actually Buying in Virtual Worlds
Start with the number, because the number is the whole press release. When a heritage act plants a flag in a virtual world, the figure that lands in the trade write-up is almost always the same shape…
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Pro Bono Legal Support for Musicians: Where the "Just Get a Lawyer" Advice Actually Breaks Down
The advice you have heard a hundred times is this: never sign a music contract without a lawyer. It is on every forum, in every "things I wish I knew" thread, repeated by every producer who got burned…
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Why Music Rights Acquisitions Don't Close on the First Try
The advice you hear at every rights conference is some version of this: a good catalog sells itself. Capital is deep, music is a non-correlated asset, the institutions are lined up around the block…
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AI Voice Generation Is Coming for Audio Ads — But "Set It and Forget It" Is the Wrong Read
First Snap, then Spotify. Within the same stretch of earnings-season optimism, two platforms that sell attention by the second started pitching the same idea to advertisers: describe your product…
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