the AI music landscape and creators rights

Hilariously bad AI generated image of Big Tech vacuuming up music.

Last week I attended an Australian music industry discussion called "Stolen Property: Big Tech’s Push to Mine Our Culture". It was a good discussion promoted by various industry bodies and notable folks; Peter Garett of Midnight Oil, was one of the attending speakers.

The overwhelming questions from participants (live viewers), was , "How do we ensure our creative work is protected when AI mining of all things on the internet is being used to train models?" - which is effectively theft. Another way to phrase this is to ask, how can copyright be enforced, when an AI model has utilised your material to produce an unknown percentage (eg 2%) of a song?

The discussion did not result in any firm answers, other than strong recommendations to join industry bodies, who fight on our behalf. It is cold comfort for anyone with music on Spotify - when the music on there is already being used to train models.

Many YouTube channels I follow have discussed and probed the issue of how to make a living with music. Top Music Attorney and Damian Keyes are two who have delved in. Krystle (of Top Music Attorney) has tackled the topic of Tech Companies ripping music off illegal sites to train their models - eg Anthorpic, as well as how Spotify and Record Companies are training AI models without compensating artists. Damian is very up-beat and positive however even he has had to admit that the current model for subscribing to Spotify for $10 a month doesn't work sufficiently to pay creators. I don't think he's tackled the AI rip-off issue yet. That's too depressing for him to cover.

Where does this leave my music? As a result of all of this, I have removed all my music from Spotify and traditional digital stores for the time-being. I have left some music on Bandcamp, which can be accessed from this site, however I'm not sure what protection I have on that site either. However, it does appear to be more artist friendly.

Until composers, music creatives and musicians work and talent is respected and paid for and the big tech and record companies stop abusing the published work of artists, then this appears to be the only way to go.