The music industry has raised alarms over the alleged fraudulent use of copyrights by artificial intelligence platforms. Large groups like Anthropic or OpenAI generate millions of songs daily, inspired – or perhaps copied – from the works of flesh-and-blood artists. While it is true that musical plagiarism has existed forever, in this case, the technological advance is of such magnitude that record labels and artists believe they are losing millions daily.
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In the United States, the music industry has been involved in a dozen major lawsuits against tech companies. The most prominent is the one currently being heard in California courts between Anthropic and record labels Universal, Concord, and Abkco. They are claiming more than 3 billion dollars from the tech company for having trained Claude with song lyrics from artists like Beyonce or The Rolling Stones. Last year, this group, backed by Google and Amazon, already sealed a 1.5 million dollar deal for a similar case.
Universal, Concord, and Abkco demand 3 billion dollars from Anthropic for fraudulently training Claude
In Europe, the most relevant legal case has taken place in Germany, where the GEMA association – representing over 100,000 artists – has won a legal battle against OpenAI for infringing intellectual property rights.
“It’s a very complex problem at a legal and technological level, which can only be solved by laying clear foundations from the beginning,” points out Turo Pekari, licensing director at Copyright Delta, a company that works to connect AI platforms and music industry companies. During a visit to Barcelona for Primavera Pro – the conference event held parallel to Primavera Sound – Pekari discussed this increasingly worrying problem with other experts.
There are no official data, but it is estimated that 30% of new songs uploaded to the internet are AI-generated. In the case of the French platform Deezer, which does break down this information (Spotify does not), 44% of the songs available on its platform are created by an algorithm, although they only attract 3% of listeners.
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A GEMA study indicates that artists would lose 27% of their income by 2028 if no action is taken against AI
At the conference, which also included Carmen Páez, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Culture; and lawyers David Serras, from Unison, and Yira Santiago, from Protege tu Música, it was proposed that the solution to the problem of intellectual property and AI lies in creating a licensing system. The market is already starting to move in this direction. Universal, Sony, and Warner (the three major global record labels) have already closed deals with specialized platforms such as Klay, Suno, and Udio. However, they have not yet done so with OpenAI or Anthropic.
“It’s a nascent industry that could represent a new revenue stream for artists who wish to license their works to platforms,” comments the Finnish executive. There are no official data yet on the potential of this business. A study by the GEMA association indicates that the AI music market could generate an impact of 3 billion dollars for artists by 2028. Conversely, it warns that if systems are not created to control the phenomenon, artists could lose 27% of their income.
According to Deezer, 44% of new songs uploaded to its platform are AI-generated
The problem, the speakers pointed out, is very complex as it presents different layers to solve. To begin with, the regulatory framework: “It’s a labyrinth; copyrights are regulated country by country with laws from 150 years ago, and the European AI regulation is totally insufficient,” Pekari asserts. Furthermore, there is a technological infrastructure problem: “As of today, there isn’t a single tool on the market that allows controlling how platforms use songs and whether they infringe copyrights,” he states. In this regard, he laments that large tech companies have preferred to crawl all internet content without having negotiated with artists beforehand, and now only have to do so if legal disputes arise. However, the biggest problem of all, Pekari maintains, is transparency, the impossibility of accessing the information used by both technological platforms and the various actors in the music industry: “There have always been confrontations and many interests at stake.”
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