It all begins with a song, goes the music business maxim.
Getting paid for a song all begins with the copyright, say the lawyers.
The ability of creators to protect their work through copyright is so fundamental that the legal concept appears in the U.S. Constitution, which grants Congress the power “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.”
The Founding Fathers, however, never anticipated generative artificial intelligence.
Generative AI tools used in music have evolved by ingesting massive amounts of data about songs originally created — and copyrighted — by songwriters, artists, recording companies and music publishers. It is transformational technology — but some have called it digital theft.
