What Needs to Be Fixed: A Working Agenda

This piece is analysis. The positions below are T.I.M.'s editorial view, not legal advice and not a statement of any organization's position.

1. Make consent-and-compensation the licensing baseline, in law

Voluntary deals between large rights holders and AI companies are not a standard that protects anyone outside the negotiating room. The PROs have said plainly that unlicensed training is not fair use. What is missing is a rule that makes consent, credit and compensation the default for every rights holder, not only those with enough catalog to command a deal.

Signal it is working: a statutory or regulatory licensing pathway open to independent rights holders on the same terms, not a patchwork of private settlements.

2. Make disclosure travel with the file

AI disclosure created at upload, carried in DDEX metadata and surfaced consistently across every store is achievable now. What is missing is uniformity: disclosure duties currently depend on the distributor. A release should carry one machine-readable provenance record — who made it, what was AI-assisted, which model, under what license — that every platform reads the same way.

Signal it is working: one standard adopted by all major distributors and stores, rather than per-company AI credit fields.

3. Put verification at the distributor, with a shared definition

IFPI's Streaming Integrity Initiative asks distributors to verify rights and uploader identity. That is the right chokepoint. It needs a published baseline for what verification means, and a path that a small independent distributor can meet without turning compliance into a barrier only large companies can afford.

Signal it is working: participation that includes the highest-volume distributors, plus transparent reporting on how many uploads were rejected and why.

4. Fix matching before distributing the black box

A market-share distribution of unclaimed royalties in 2027 resolves an accounting backlog without resolving its cause. The durable fix is better matching: standardized writer and publisher identifiers at registration, mandatory IPI/ISNI capture, and a realistic process for correcting bad metadata after the fact.

Signal it is working: a falling share of collections going unmatched year over year — not a one-time payout.

5. Publish the split, not just the total

"Billions paid to the industry" is not a disclosure an artist can act on. Per-stream rates, the proportion retained at each stage of the chain, and the treatment of AI-assisted works within pro-rata pools should be reported in a form that lets a working musician model their own income.

Signal it is working: label and platform reporting that distinguishes what reached recording artists and songwriters from what reached rights holders generally.

The through-line

Every item above is a version of the same problem: the industry has repeatedly resolved structural questions through private agreements, then reported the aggregate result as if it were broadly shared. AI has made that pattern more expensive. It did not create it.