Indie Songwriters Bristling Over Major Label AI Negotiations

Indie songwriters and composers are frustrated at the major labels’ “closed-door” AI negotiations and demand an open process.

Independent songwriters and composers have heard this song before; Bloomberg reports that major multi-national record labels are engaged in closed-door meetings with yet another group of tech companies over AI negotiations and copyright infringement liability. Unsurprisingly, independent music creators may as well be invisible in these discussions—despite the fact these talks may completely change the landscape of the professional, artistic, and financial futures of these artists.

Major labels previously sued tech companies operating generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) systems Udio and Suno in a bid to head them off from scraping and incorporating millions of musical compositions and recordings into their training databases without license or permission. But now they’re at the negotiation table to hash out a deal that won’t benefit the creators behind these compositions and recordings.

“‘Training’ in this instance (as is often the case with Silicon Valley jargon), really means ‘ingesting’ existing copyrighted music without authorization, and enabling algorithmic output of unauthorized derivative works, the value of which will accrue solely to the benefit of the GenAI companies without royalty payments of any kind to the original human creators,” reads a statement issued by the Songwriters Guild of America (SGA), the Society of Composers & Lyricists (SCL), and Music Creators North America (MCNA). The statement comes in time to kick off Music Week in New York City.

“This situation is sadly reminiscent of past, backroom music industry deals from which creators were essentially excluded, resulting in grossly unfair, opaque, industry-wide arrangements between international conglomerates under which all parties but creators and artists benefitted,” their statement continues. “The catastrophe of untenable music streaming royalty rates is just one example among many of how these so-called ‘equity deals’ can result in the devaluation of music in ways that make it nearly impossible to earn a living as a music creator. We cannot allow this history to repeat itself.”

The aforementioned music industry organizations ask for the benefit of an “open, legislative dialog and process whereby all details are disclosed to the affected parties and market competition is preserved.”

“It should be with the disclosure of how licensing guidelines will be negotiated and implemented shared with creators, how creators may opt in or out of input ‘training’ systems, how back-end royalties on output will be generated and shared, how the one-third of music creators not affiliated with the majors will be provided with safeguards from being excluded from the licensing marketplace, and certainly not least of all, how the conflicts of interest created by vertical integration, consolidation, and equity stakes will be addressed and mitigated in the framing of US and international GenAI licensing solutions.”

“[Independent music creators] want meaningful input and seats at the table in a legislative process that should take precedence over secretive, backroom deals among multi-billion-dollar corporations that prize only raw, short-term profit,” they write. “We want the legislative implementation of rules that will create a fair and sustainable GenAI ecosystem nationally and globally. And we want a market environment that allows all businesses and creators to thrive, along with the preservation and advancement of American and global musical culture.”

The US-based organizations join their worldwide music creator and artist colleagues, including Fair Trade Music International, the UK Musicians’ Union, the Ivors Academy, and numerous others, in making these points and demands. “As the major companies and their trade associations prepare to announce the ‘industry-wide solutions’ they’ve negotiated without consultation with those who actually create the cultural product on which our industry rests, we have just one thing to say: We ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again.’”