THE INDUSTRY
Copyright rulings, Content ID, label drama, and what the machine age actually means for anyone releasing music. The analysis, minus the panic.
AI Copyright and the Fine Print: Who Actually Owns the Song Your Generator Just Made
A director I work with sent me a track last spring, generated in about forty seconds from a text prompt, and asked one reasonable question: "Can we clear this for the festival cut?" Not a hard…
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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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AI Copyright and the Song You Don't Actually Own: A Producer's Reality Check
Last month I ran a small experiment I should have run a year ago. I generated a track — a slow, smoke-damaged trip-hop thing, roughly 82 BPM in F minor, a detuned Rhodes over a filtered break — and…
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What Spotify Partnerships in Afrobeats Actually Buy — and Who Gets Paid
A festival stage in Lagos, a DSP logo on the backdrop, and a press line about "investing in the sound of a generation." The easy read is that the platform bought the moment.
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AI Music Generation and Master Rights: What You Actually Own When the Model Sings a Gamelan
Last month I fed a generator a four-bar phrase built around an interlocking kulintang-style pattern — bronze gongs, a lilting call-and-response I'd transcribed years ago from a field recording.
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How AI Music Policy Is Rewriting the Path From Upload to Payout
Picture a release you scheduled for a Friday. Distributor confirmed it weeks ago, the artwork's clean, you told your list.
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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…
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AI Music Generation Has a Consent Problem, and Black Artists Are Paying the Bill
The problem with AI music generation is not that the music sounds bad. Plenty of it sounds fine. The problem is the ledger — the list of names whose work went into the machine, who never got asked…
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Where to Distribute AI Music: The Streaming Platform AI Music Policy That Actually Affects Your Payout
You upload a track through your distributor on a Tuesday. Wednesday it's "in review." Friday you get an email: the release is held pending "clarification of the tools used in production." You didn't…
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Trade Dress Infringement, Six Years, and $17.9M: What OMG Girlz vs L.O.L. Surprise! Teaches Anyone Licensing an Artist's Brand
The arithmetic tells the whole story before the law does. A jury in September 2024 put the number at $71.5 million. A judge knocked it to $1 on a technicality of damages calculation.
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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…
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The $10 Million Question: What AI Music Generation Artist Programs Actually Fund
A round number lands in your inbox with the word "fund" next to it — say ten million dollars, earmarked for independent artists by a company built on AI music generation. The press language is warm.
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