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\n\tMany AI companies are already scanning the work you control<\/a> \u2014 I\u2019m skipping the usual \u201callegedly,\u201d since this is hypothetical \u2014 and you want to make them pay to do so. Then, one day, another AI company comes to you and says it wants to do just that \u2014 scan all of your works and use them to train its algorithms. In return, it\u2019s willing to give you a one-time payment of $300 million, with no further obligations on either side. All you have to do is sign the deal, take the money and\u2026 then what?<\/p>\n \n\tWould you take the deal? The question takes on new urgency now that STIM, the Swedish collecting society, announced on Sept. 9 that it had set up the first collective licensing deal for AI training<\/a>. That followed an early-August deal<\/a> between ElevenLabs and Kobalt and Merlin. It is still unclear in the U.S. whether the copying of works to train an AI algorithm even requires a license, so these deals should probably be seen as experiments.<\/p>\n \n\tI\u2019d argue that you shouldn\u2019t take the deal \u2014 if you even could, based on what rights you controlled for which territories. Analyzing a work requires ingesting it, which in turn requires making a copy. That involves copyright law, under which this would be considered a mechanical reproduction. It is not settled as to whether using an AI algorithm involves making a copy, but it\u2019s obvious that training one does. So it\u2019s possible \u2014 not definite, but possible \u2014 that each AI company only needs to copy a work once.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tRelated\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n \n\tSo that $300 million payment could be the only one you\u2019d ever get. And once you get it, your songwriters will have to compete with an algorithm that can use their works to churn out an enormous volume of similar music. And that assumes you could even sign such a deal without the permission of rightsholders \u2014 both the STIM and Kobalt deals are opt-in \u2014 plus figure out where the deal would apply. But the big issue is that rightsholders essentially need to find a way to control the horse after it has left the barn.<\/p>\n \n\tThe 4 billion Euro question \u2014 based on CISAC\u2019s estimate of the value of generative AI music in 2028 \u2014 is how rightsholders can use the rights they can license as a lever to exercise some control over the rights they can\u2019t. Some of this is just practical \u2014 they need to have some sense of how much algorithms rely on different works in order to pay out royalties from whatever agreements they make. (In the example of the $300 million offer, how would COMPLEX deal with that revenue?) But some of it is strategic: As AI uses copyrighted songs to create new ones, rightsholders deserve an ongoing revenue stream, both because these new creations are built on their work and because those creations will inevitably compete with theirs.<\/p>\n![\"AI](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1757626750_461_glennharvey_2025_08_28_billboard_f1-1800.jpg\")
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