Regarding what we should do, I think this is a follow-the-money situation. As I see it, AI-music companies have two categories of customers to target: One is regular people who want to make songs at home, the second is music-for-media companies who can save money by not hiring composers.
My guess is companies like Suno or Udio are thinking they’re going to make most of their money from hobbyists who want to create their own songs. Millions of people buying $10/month subscriptions. My thinking is that if we can keep them focused on that segment of the marketplace, they won’t be as incentivized to look at us. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure they’d love to cash in on the music for media marketplace, too, but it’s small potatoes compared to the general market, so it’s not likely to be an early priority.
More to the point of this thread, I think we can make it even less attractive to them, namely by making it less profitable for them. How? Consider that there are two ways they (or us) get paid for music in media - upfront fees and backend royalties.
Upfront fees - Obviously the higher they are, the better (for us.) If AI charges $1 to score a commercial, then a client is likely to give it a try. While if they charge a grand or two, then clients could still save money by going that route, but if the savings aren’t as huge, they’ll be thinking,“Mike is such a nice guy, even with his bad jokes, plus he always comes up with ideas and directions we wouldn’t have thought of.” Thinking-outside-the-box and all that. So I would at least have a chance at that gig.
Also, remember that we don’t just sell music, we sell peace of mind. Producers don’t want to spend hours going through library (or AI) tracks. You’d think they would always prioritize saving money, of course, but unless a project is ultra low budget, producers value their time. Music is a proportionately small part of the budget, so it’s not hard for them to justify a few grand to make their lives easier.
How can we incentivize AI companies to keep their music-for-media fees high? I think it can be done, although not by direct means. Rather, we can do it indirectly if we can take away their backend royalties. In other words, if they can’t collect backend from ASCAP/BMI, then the only money they make is on the front end. And since there aren’t that many films/TV-shows/games in production, they can’t make a profit if they’re only charging $10 per project. There’s not enough volume, so to make the market worthwhile, they need to charge a decent amount per show/film/spot.
My guess is ASCAP will be on our side with this, since ASCAP is … us! (Songwriters and composers.) Their leadership is on the older side, though, so they may be unaware of the AI threat. So informing them is probably the first thing to do. I imagine someone has already thought this same thing, of course, so hopefully that process has started. But if anyone has connections, it wouldn’t hurt to reach out. (I may reach out, but my ASCAP checks don’t carry the clout they used to.) From there, it won’t be hard to get them to agree that only humans should collect royalties.
BMI is more of a concern, now that it’s commercially owned. (I don’t trust those mo-fos. this is awfully coincidental timing.) If BMI decided to accept AI “composers,” the membership might complain, but even if they leave, BMI could decide to go full AI-money-grab, and be the safe haven for production companies that use AI and want to collect PRO royalties from it.
That would be a huge problem, but it’s against the spirit of our U.S. PRO laws, where tthere are government sweetheart deals carved into law for ASCAP and BMI, so government intervention may be able to prevent them from going rogue. Adam Schiff already presented an AI bill recently, although I don’t know what it says. (I’m guessing it’s focused on writers and maybe actors?) He represents part of L.A., so he’s obviously already on our side, so we do have friendly ears in congress. Here’s where having an attorney on board could be useful, so we’d know what the government can actually do. Unlike actors and writers, there are already laws on the books for us, so we have an advantage there.
Assuming we can get full support of the PROs, then we can probably leverage music libraries as well, since backend royalties are a large part of how they get paid. It’s not like music libraries are desperate for more music anyway, so it wouldn’t take much to tip them into a “No AI” stance. In fact, I don’t think the current libraries (at least the big ones) want this business disrupted, anyway, since cheaper music is bad for everyone, including them. So I suspect they’re already friendly to us.
No doubt there would be upstart libraries that are largely or entirely AI generated. As long as we can keep the PROs from paying backend, though, then these guys will only be appealing to small productions, which I don’t think we can win anyway. For instance, some home improvement show on HGTV may already be direct licensed anyway, so a lot of these battles were already lost even before AI enters the picture. (A disturbing number of shows, and even a few cable networks, pay no royalties at all.)
There might still be individual composers who cheat, and start cranking out tracks by the bucketload, but if an environment is created where that sort of thing is considered bad, then I imagine rules could be put in place to discourage that. Libraries could require DAW files as proof of composition, for instance.
The bottom line is that if we can keep ASCAP/BMI/SESAC on our side, I think we can make this an unattractive market for AI. Music for media is a tiny industry to begin with, and I doubt Suno has started putting together a team of sales people to market to Paramount. Even at its most optimistic, we’re small potatoes compared to what I believe is their real goal of selling zillions of monthly subscriptions to wannabe songwriters around the world.
