THE INDUSTRY
Copyright rulings, Content ID, label drama, and what the machine age actually means for anyone releasing music. The analysis, minus the panic.
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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AI-Generated Music Policy Is Now a Royalty-Pool Problem: What Distributors and Labels Actually Have to Do
A track lands in a distributor's ingestion queue at 2 a.m. — a moody downtempo instrumental, 82 BPM, F minor, delivered as a 48kHz WAV with stems.
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What GPS Trackers on a Tour Van Tell Us About K-Pop Industry Ethics
Last month a client sent me a phone recording of a fan chant from a stadium show and asked whether I could clean it up into a crowd bed for a promo edit. Standard request.
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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.
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Venue Ownership Is the Quiet Engine of Music Industry M&A
There is a persistent belief among people who model live-entertainment companies for a living: that the venue itself is the boring part. The brand has the pricing power.
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AI Music Detection Is a Forensic Craft Now — Here's How the Pros Actually Do It
A country single crossed an A&R friend's desk last winter with a backstory that checked out on paper: a regional act, a clutch of streams, a label-ready master at 48kHz. The voice had grit.
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AI and Music Rights Won't Be Settled in Court — They'll Be Settled in Infrastructure
The fight over AI and music rights will not be settled by a landmark verdict. It will be settled by whoever builds the registries, the metadata, and the payment rails that decide who gets paid when a…
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TIDAL's AI Music Generation Policy vs. The Streaming Status Quo: Whose Royalties Actually Survive
A producer I work with sent me her quarterly streaming statement last spring with one line circled in red: the per-stream rate on a catalog of forty tracks had slipped again, and she couldn't tell…
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The Cost Comparison Tech Giants Don't Want in the AI Copyright Regulation Debate
A friend who runs a small commercial studio sent me two numbers last month. The first was an invoice: $4,200 for a three-day session to cut a 90-second cue for a regional ad.
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Music Publishing's Regional Land Grab Isn't About Buying Catalogs Anymore
When a mid-size publisher announces it is "entering" the Latin or African or Southeast Asian market, the instinct among people watching the cap table is to ask how big the catalog was and what…
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The "Buy Catalogs, Win the Market" Rule of Music Publishing — Where It Breaks Down
The advice you hear at every conference panel and in every investor deck goes like this: if you want to grow in an emerging market, buy the catalog.
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