Independent-publishing bodies Impel and IMPF are the latest music-industry orgs to set out some principles for how AI-music licensing should work. One of the key points is aimed as much at labels as at AI companies.
“One principle is non-negotiable: the song must be properly valued and, absent other salient factors, at least equally with the recording,” is the key sentence there.
“Whilst AI generation can take place in various forms that must be treated on their merits, any licensing model that, ab initio, treats publishing as a minor share of value while allocating the overwhelming majority of revenues to master rights is unacceptable.”
Some AI deals, including Kobalt’s with ElevenLabs and the NMPA’s with Udio, have included parity for songs and recordings. The terms and splits of other prominent deals have not been made public, however.
Impel and the IMPF’s principles also call for the scope of licensing deals to be “specific and must not create unintended pathways for broader future uses”, while warning that “downstream uses of AI-generated music must yield appropriate royalties for the songs on which AI models are trained.”
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