A.I Music Production Is the New Sampling and Licensing Is Catching Up.

Much like sampling evolved music creation in the 1980s, AI is now driving the next paradigm shift in production techniques and copyright challenges.

While AI and digital tools have dramatically lower barriers to creative output, the business and legal frameworks lag dangerously behind.There is ongoing development; licensing systems, copyright case law, and royalty structures are now moving to adapt to this new shape shifting landscape.

As tools emerge to track and license A.I generated music, one thing is clear;  those that believe they have free access to similar sounding material to known music using AI generation, think again. You will have to pay for these ‘samples’.

The industry is shifting toward proactive licensing models enabling more precise licensing, with automated royalties based on creative input minimising disputes. Now licensing will have the capability to automatically generate before release.

New tools that track and license AI-generated music and licensing automatically could be the new way income will be generated for creative licensable work.

A.I detection systems are being built by companies such at Musical AI formally Somms.ai to track a song’s provenance in AI programs - ingestion to ideation to generation and distribution ensuring transparency long before a track goes public. No more legal grey areas in AI generated sounds.

“The current problem in the marketplace is that many AI companies agree that the people who own music and IP should be paid. However, rights holders don’t have mechanisms in place to control and monitor usage....It [Musical AI] can determine the percentage contribution of each source material to a specific AI creation, allowing for fairer attribution and compensation for rights holders when their work is used by AI.” - Matthew Adell, Musical AI

While picking up creators input on AI generated training and tracking the process through to new music generation is great news, the ideal offering is clear. Copyright ownership trails and automated distributed agreements and payment for income generation for creators.

Musical AI with their manefesto "It is our collective responsibility to ensure that the essence of music – human creativity – remains respected and recognized." are one of a few companies emerging that solve a key part in this new automation.

Though we can push further with the tools at our disposal for the whole process to be tracked and much more easily and transparently administered. Collaboration between these separate entities can link for an administrative solution; Musical AI process, Ascap,Sacem, PRS process, Signable with Bandcamp.

Think inserting a completed song into this linked system which could automatically generate a fully administered song ready for release and trackable revenues for collaborators both Human and AI. The new digital self learning publishing company in the AI age.

Long-term, this automated shift ...and this may well be a breath of fresh air for many creatives.
Less administrative burden
More automated royalty payments

Originator rightful compensation
Finally full transparency in publishing 

Goodbye plagiarism at all levels. Thats right, even lesser known writers should automatically be paid for their legitimately time stamped and registered music.

This could signal a fairer and automated music publishing system if created and rolled out to all released music.

Artists still risk losing control over use of their work unless their approval processes are prioritised in this new landscape.

The reality we are in is; when used alongside human creativity A.I can expand artistic possibilities while generating new revenue streams for creators and copyright holders.