JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Brian, a suggestion...

The whole legal battle isn't remotely about artist rights being trampled on etc... that is all a bull![naughty word removed] smoke screen. The labels and publishers want a piece of A.I. ownership. Nothing more or less. Just like they sold out every songwriter and artist they represent, the will take a % of these A.I. companies and then let them rape and pillage the music any way they want. Why? Because this IS the future and it isn't going away. If the labels and publishers do not secure a big chunk and a big say over this technology (and they will force these companies to agree to terms that will be a forever barrier to new companies wanting to compete just like Spotify has done) because if they do not get it, their power will shrink to zero in a generation and these corporate overlords will be out on their asses. They will NOT let that happen. So in the end, artists and writers will 100% get shafted far worse than they think they are now, and the dagger will come from their actual representatives from the publishers and labels, just like it did with Spotify.

I predicted all this in a several essays back in the mid 2000s. A couple I published in my column in Singer Magazine. These labels and publishers are losing grip and they will stop at nothing to keep power. Due to the nature of this technology, the harm they will cause after these cases inevitably settle will be earth shattering to creative people as we once knew them. It democratizes the music making process so that just about anyone with a little creativity can easily produce pro-level material and we will see nobodies with middling talent having massive success that would make Taylor Swift blush.

We already have lost the concept of "bands" and now what we have is "producer teams" taking those roles. It is a group of collaborators who do all the work on the backend, then hire or create a front artist to play the songs live (and in most cases, tech is "playing" the songs and the folks on stage are pretending) We see that now with the Eagles. Don Henley is lip synching and the band is using a locked down synch track/click to keep time with an actual auto-tuned recording live. He has destroyed any reputation he may have had and has entered full blown "poseur" mode. He might as well be in a Karaoke Bar on lip-synch night. But he is grifting or $1000s a seat! Sick...