I test platforms specifically to see how they handle copyright. Today, I spent the day with legal advisors to discuss the latest on the Post-AI-Gen situation of commercially released music that happens faster than any human can create and is saturating the field with highly redundant slop.

In general, I’m pro AI because I see it as a tool among others, but I’m uncomfortable with producers who use gender mismatched cloned vocals as if they were instrumentals. I’m less offended when girls use male cloned vocals, because in my opinion, in order to achieve balance and equality, women should get a pass on that, but as usual, most of the time it is the opposite. Imagine a dude sitting on his couch eating chips and “singing” all day with female vocals. Isn’t that reprehensible? It is to me for some reason. It is now the norm and some AI producers who source and tweak artificial female vocals have already signed with major labels, but at the same time I see producers’ stuff get taken down for precisely that, and they retroactively get demonetized. 

Also, the saturation of certain styles makes it nearly impossible to monetize them because at this point some loops and beats have been so overused that they can’t be copyrighted again. In other words, they’re copies of copies of copies of the same redundant funk and RnB stuff that’s been going around since the 60’s or 70’s. These samples exist in billions of songs and yeah, this shit gets actively demonetized at the moment. 

I’m known to change my mind a lot depending on the day. I love taking risks, but I’m also known to divest at a whim which has resulted in litigation in the past. It’s nice to gamble but when it’s time to get the hell out, I’m out. It is very intuitive and unpredictable. I can’t explain it or plan for it. The current landscape of sound is very compatible with how I work since the only predictable element is that things will change, my mind is going to shift, algorithms are going to shift, and another sure thing is that a lot of shit is going to get taken down. We can’t know which shit precisely and why, because the future is fluid, and so should be we.  

Funniest part in this mayhem is that even the human musicians who use 100% “organic” instruments ALSO get flagged for detection of “undisclosed” artificial stuff in their music. Well, they didn’t disclose it because they did it “organically”, the slow way, playing a little crappy synth sample for hours to get it right, and still they get flagged? Yup, some algorithms will tell you that a synth is a synth. The technological revolution from the 80’s, 90’s gets ID’s as AI these days. 

That being said, everyone can be boring and redundant and it appears that the algorithms cannot always make the difference between a boring human or a boring bot, they apparently just sound the same kind of boring. 

I personally find many AI generated tracks original, but that’s likely due to algorithmic curation for me specifically based on the way I interact with music in general. I already have a natural boring-filter in my ear that functions more or less like those algorithms. I don’t care how you made the music, I either like it, or I side-swipe. It takes me a few seconds in average. On rare occasions, I would cancel songs due to objectionable lyrics, but most of the time, I know from the start, I’m even more subjective than the algorithms. 

As for Suno, their content always has some kind of a watermark (I can hear it even in the commercial versions), so Suno-generated content is the easiest to flag on several platforms. Even if you own commercial rights to your output, it may end up being blocked on TikTok and elsewhere. If not today, maybe before the end of the year. Best-case scenario Suno songs are heavily shadow-banned, worst case they are quietly removed from catalogues. 

In general, it is stipulated in all contracts that commercial rights do not include copyright. You are on the hook for all infringing outputs as a creator. 

If you don’t have commercial rights from AI platforms and you try to monetize, not only are you on the hook for breach of contract, but you will also be detected and then you won’t be allowed to submit more tracks for the time being. Happens to several producers who tried to scam the system.

Regarding the accounts who spew out 4000 commercial-right tracks a month, I don’t understand why they still exist. If I were an algorithm I would start removing those accounts first. No need to listen, it is impossible to be that productive. The quantity alone signals abuse. 

I was surprised to learn that many musicians have tried to give AI artist credit due to the vocals. It is extremely bizarre that this happens on such a scale. It shows a profound lack of understanding of copyright and even music per se. Obviously, these people get flagged and they get barred from re-uploading. 

Due to the above, several distributors are starting to require proof of human input before paying out any royalties or accepting tracks. They also want proof of existence of alleged human artist. It means that you need to document in video your studio work, including performances of at least one unplugged version per commercially released song (you and a single organic instrument). If you claim performance royalties but have no video proof, they may also require to see government ID and 9 minute selfie-recordings to verify your biometric features.

I hope biometrics will root out the cheaters especially for vocals, but I haven’t seen any reliable vocal biometric detectors yet. Nevertheless, we can expect that in the near future, content ID will be linked to your digital ID, or you won’t get paid. 

Another surprising thing I learned is that if you sample ambient sound in your music, you will get blocked and demonetized. It brought back some memories (of ahem litigation). Ambient sound recording is a synonym of “intrusion upon seclusion” to put it mildly. Sure a helicopter sound, sirens, here and there shouldn’t be at issue, but I suspect privacy violations are the main concern, so that shit now gets retroactively deplatformed and can result in account blocks. Isn’t that amazing!

Some popular distributors have started quietly and retroactively removing entire catalogues, which of course captures human-made music and falsely flagged material. How fascinating is this? It somehow confirms that slop cannot be distinguished from human output. The chaos is real. 

Now, I’m really curious if my own cloned vocals will get removed. AI can really help with speech improvement and fixing your “accent” in different languages. If my own cloned vocals get flagged, I will simply have to stand up from the couch and re-record my vocals the hard way. 

Ultimately, the best thing is to only release stuff you can truly perform yourself. There is more to music than just releasing large quantity and volume. We’re not potato growers. You must find the time to make videos, document your existence as a human artist in videos and shorts, promote the tracks, and only keep a sustainable catalogue. 

Edit: I forgot to address the negative changes that flow from the court settlements, and concerns of degrading quality on platforms that just signed deals with major labels. As provided in the settlements, the current models are being downgraded as we speak and will be taken down at the end of the year. The new models will be trained on very limited major label-owned and controlled databases. Artists will opt-in (we all know how elastic this notion is in this industry). Creators will likely will be limited to covers and remixes like in the Udio fiasco. Although it is not the worst idea in the world to be backed by Warners as a creator, I doubt the viability of that business model. 

I think Suno and Udio will eventually file for bankruptcy and maybe that was the entire point of the lawsuits. There are rumours that China will step in with a more advanced AI model to save music creators. After all, China saved our lives back in 2019 by bringing TikTok to the world, when the dominant platforms in the West were plateau-ing on static photos and political garbage. Now even the boomer-dominated Meta platforms fully integrated short-form video in the attempt to resemble the original TikTok.

Edit (2nd) I didn’t address Spotify because it is not a copyright scandal, but more of a contract problem. Moreover, I’ve completely divested two years ago as a user (listener) from Spotify because they were giving me the creeps long before artists started exiting in droves. The vibe was weird, the algorithm acted up, so I stopped paying money for it. Now I am learning that Spotify not only doesn’t pay people for their streams but it systemically terrorizes artists with unfounded penalties and takedowns in order to enrich itself unjustly. 

In sum, I was informed that the cheapest way to take down a song, an artist, or a whole label catalog from Spotify is to flood them with botted streams sold for a couple of dollars from botfarms in Bengladesh and other weird countries that violate human rights, literally the cheapest promos, and direct them to create botted playlists where they add the songs at issue. It is a guaranteed takedown and maybe it could even bankrupt artists or their labels. On one hand, if you need to take down a song that is infringing you, It could save you years in litigation, it is a shortcut. However, it can also be used maliciously by someone who doesn’t like you, or if you’re a girl artist, any jealous ex may hit you with fake streams to ruin your life and cause financial distress. No evidence will ever be shown to you by Spotify, so everyone is a target at the moment, which is understandably quite hostile and unsafe for vulnerable artists. 

I hear people are returning to digital copies like back in the 2010’s, similar to all musicians and creators who keep digital copies instead of streams in the cloud, because we make the exact music we want to hear on a daily basis. So streaming will basically die, because arbitrary penalties without evidence can’t be a sustainable business model.

At the end of the day, we don’t want more data centers, because we’re out of water all over north america and humanity will be extinct sooner or later, depending on how fast we kill off parasitic online activity such as stream counts, view counts, and other metrics that force users to have recourse to promotion services in the first place. Such metrics should become synonym for climate change and planet destruction, greed, forced labor and the end of our civilization.