The Independent Voice · Editorial
AI & the Music Industry
Reporting on how artificial intelligence is rewriting the rules of rights, royalties and release — and how the organizations that collect and move money are responding. Every story cites its sources so you can verify it yourself.
Industry Developments
What is actually changing — lawsuits, platform policy, and the deals reshaping the catalog.
AI Music Companies Are Settling, Not Winning — and Fair Use Is Still Undecided
The lawsuits against Suno and Udio are being resolved through licensing deals rather than court rulings. That resolves the business problem without settling the legal one.
Read the storyAI Tracks Are 44% of Uploads and 1–3% of Streams. Both Numbers Matter.
Deezer's 2026 disclosure reframes the AI debate: the catalog is being flooded, but listener attention is not following. Platform enforcement is now aimed at the flood.
Read the storyPROs, Publishers & Distributors Respond
How the organizations that collect and move money are adapting their rules.
Distributors Are Now the Industry's Front Door — and Its Choke Point
IFPI's Streaming Integrity Initiative and platform-level AI disclosure are moving rights verification onto distributors, where policies differ sharply.
Read the storyASCAP, BMI and SOCAN Align: Partial-AI Works Are Registrable, Fully AI Works Are Not
The three major North American PROs adopted matching policies in October 2025 — drawing a clear line between AI as a tool and AI as the author.
Read the storyThe Current State of the Industry
What the numbers say about who the growth is reaching.
What Needs to Be Fixed
Our analysis of the practical changes that would make the business fairer.
The same coverage runs in each quarterly issue of The Independent Voice.
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