Youtube channels are using AI to steal words and photographs from paywalled news content and reproduce articles wholesale without the consent of publishers. The practice has been highlighted by freelance journalist Rob McGibbon after a first-person account of his estrangement from his late father written for the Daily Mail was lifted wholesale and reproduced by the Youtube Channel: “The World News.”
Source: Google ‘handling stolen goods’ with Youtube theft of paywalled news articles
Tony Latham, a music industry veteran, has founded Royalty Access Studio (RAS), a platform to provide advances against future royalty payments to artists and songwriters worldwide. Latham’s new project promises “transparent and ethical alternative to traditional royalty financing, with a streamlined application process, no credit checks, and straightforward documentation.”
A broad array of leading automakers and technology companies have sent a letter to the Chairs and Ranking Members of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, asking them to advance the American Music Fairness Act (AMFA). The legislation will require big radio companies that made $13.6 billion in advertising revenue last year to pay the artists whose music they currently play for free.
Fraudsters are flooding Spotify, Apple Music and the rest with AI-generated tracks, to try and hoover up the royalties generated by people listening to them. These tracks are cheap, quick and easy to make, with Deezer estimating in April that over 20,000 fully AI-created tracks – that’s 18% of new tracks – were being ingested into its platform daily, almost double the number in January.
Source: AI, bot farms and innocent indie victims: how music streaming became a hotbed of fraud and fakery
The impact of artificial intelligence, particularly generative AI, on the media and entertainment industries was a topic of debate at the Media & Telecoms 2025 & Beyond Conference in London on Tuesday. And some industry executives suggested that an alliance of media players could be the best strategy to protect copyright and open up opportunities for media companies in the AI age.
Source: “NATO for News”: Is a Joint Effort by Media Companies the Way to Go in the Age of AI?
Last month, Google announced SynthID Detector, a new tool to detect AI-generated content. Google claims it can identify AI-generated content in text, image, video or audio. But there are some caveats. The main catch is that SynthID primarily works for content that’s been generated using a Google AI service. If you try to use Google’s AI detector tool to see if something you’ve generated using ChatGPT is flagged, it won’t work.
Before the proliferation of A.I. music generators, before the emergence of Spotify and the advent of the iPod, before Brian Eno had even coined the term “generative music,” Mr. Cope had already figured out how to program a computer to write classical music. It was 1981 and, struggling with writer’s block after being commissioned to compose an opera, he was desperate for a compositional partner. He found one in a floppy disk.
The deal brings to a close one of the music industry’s most high-profile ownership disputes. Swift confirmed the news on Friday (May 30) in a handwritten letter to her fans. The transaction involves the master rights to Swift’s albums Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989, and Reputation – recordings that have been at the center of a six-year battle over artist ownership rights.
Source: Taylor Swift buys back master rights to first six albums from Shamrock Capital
Universal Music, Warner Music and Sony Music are in talks with Udio and Suno to license their music to the artificial intelligence startups, Billboard has confirmed, in deals that could help settle blockbuster lawsuits over AI music. A year after the labels filed billion-dollar copyright cases against Udio and Suno, all three majors are discussing deals in which they would collect fees and receive equity in return for allowing the startups to use music to train their AI models.
Source: Major Labels in Licensing Talks With A.I. Companies Suno & Udio Amid Blockbuster Lawsuit
Audiobook sales returned to a double-digit growth rate in 2024, increasing 13% over 2023, according to the just-released Audio Publishers Association Sales Survey. After a number of years of sales growing at a rate of at least 10% annually, sales rose 9% in 2023. Last year, total sales from the APA members who supply data increased to $2.22 billion; the bump was driven, unsurprisingly, by digital audio.