JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Songwriter Message Forum Songwriter payouts - Vanity article

I think we are in a changing world. But I have NEVER been for the Disney created life +70 years nonsense distopia we are in now. It used to be just long enough for creators families to benefit while they move on with life. Now it is a corporatized bludgeon against everyone. Here is the scariest truth: A.I. literally creates and copyrights (under a corporate banner) every possible melodic presentation of music. THAT is what is literally happening right now. I do not believe anyone except the creator and their direct human lineage should have control of a copyright. ZERO protections for anyone other than the creator and perhaps (if written with teeth) a short time afterwards for direct family to benefit, sort of like life insurance. Meanwhile, there would also be a range of time for new works never released prior to the death of a copyright holder to be released by actual family for a set time period upon first release. That would allow inheritors of the works of a creator to properly archive, present and ensure the survival of unpublished works. But this timing should also be limited to a discovery and first publication. After X number of years, those unpublished works would automatically be public domain.

We are about to see a number of works added to the "commercial" space in amounts we can't even imagine. Literally millions of songs an hour are being created already. As it improves, there will no longer even be a point to discussing human or robot because there will be 10,000,000,000 robot works for every 1 a human creates. It will make up all the "charts" it will be used for free by other TYPES of creators who will get paid for expertise in ways we do not even yet imagine. But people will earn more on active skills than passively for prior works.

We will not see the end of artificially controlled "commercial" spaces. Things like Spotify and iTunes are 100% controlled by powers who make money, not music. When private companies control the numbers, they can tell us anything and we can't refute it. I can listen to the current Top 40 songs and find 3-5 that have true chart topping merit, and I have probably the widest music pallette of 99.99% of people and have heard more artists music than likely anyone else alive. (I would LOVE to meet any one else anywhere close to me simply to compare notes). But when I can find no true merit in the chart yet plenty of amazing songs nearly anywhere else I look, then you know it is just a money game and little else. Pay to play, sex for play, selling soul for pay, on and on. It is all fake.

SO what is VALUABLE... selling music or playing and creating music? I say it is ALL about the later. The benefit to humans is not whether Taylor Swift Inc. or Rap Artist du jour Inc. make more money, it is if more and more people can engage in the joys of creating something. That is the only golden lining in this story. And that is not a bad default.