THE SIGNAL
Guides, tutorials, and brutally honest reviews on AI music generation, royalty-free sound, and the future of production. Tune in.
Studio Time vs. AI Music Generation: What a Track Actually Costs You in 2024
The number everyone quotes is ten thousand dollars. That's the figure that gets tossed around when someone wants to make the case for AI music: a real studio session runs you five figures, and a…
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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 Podcast Where AI Music Generation Stopped Being a Rumor and Started Being a Tuesday
A famous actor sits across from a podcast host, laptop open, and says the quiet part into the microphone: this stuff scares him.
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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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The Gallery Analogy Is Doing a Lot of Work in AI Copyright Regulation
Last month I ran a small test, mostly out of suspicion. I took a bassline I know cold — a detuned analog walk in F minor, the kind of line that sits under a thousand library cues — and I described it…
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Net Proceeds: What Charity Music Festivals Actually Move
A benefit festival sells a ticket for, say, $150. By the time the cause sees money, the line on the press release reads "net proceeds." Somewhere between that $150 and the check that lands at a…
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