To most music companies, AI is just a practical issue — a problem to be solved, an opportunity to be seized, or some combination of the two. With the right combination of legislation, litigation and consternation, the same generative AI technology that now threatens to dilute streaming royalties could allow another set of rights to be licensed to another group of technology startups. This will not be easy — witness the industry’s efforts to stop the UK from loosening its copyright laws — but at least it’s relatively straightforward.
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06/18/2025To songwriters and the organizations that represent them, this is all more complicated. Control over works is often shared (both among writers and between writers and publishers) and rights are often divided (among publishers and various collecting societies that represent public performance rights, mechanical rights, or some combination of the two). In Continental Europe, where copyright is more akin to a fundamental right than an economic one, the threat of AI also cuts deeper. It “raises fundamental questions about the nature of authorship and creativity,” wrote Björn Ulvaeus, frontman of ABBA and President of CISAC, the global trade organization of collecting societies, in his introduction to CISAC’s 2025 annual report. Ulvaeus sees potential in AI, properly regulated, but “this is about upholding the entire system of copyright and authors’ rights.”
CISAC, which had its annual general assembly meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria, on May 28 — as part of several days worth of meetings — not only advocates for the rights of creators (defined in the music business as songwriters) but maintains the interlocking technology and financial infrastructure that makes it possible for collective rights management organizations to remit money to one another. To say that most of this happens behind the scenes is putting it mildly: One of the major topics was the modernization of CIS-Net, which manages the way the various collective management organizations exchange data.
“You may think you see here a famous musician and songwriter,” Ulvaeus said during a speech delivered over video. “But I have a confession to make: what really fires me up these days is… data.” He’s serious: “Data is about money in the pockets of creators.”
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06/02/2025The big concern was AI, though. To CISAC, the technology presents a series of interlocking problems: How to license it legally, which is the same issue other rightsholders face now that the major labels are talking to Suno and Udio. This is complicated enough. And labels can potentially license rights to all of the recordings in their catalogs. Licensing songs is more complicated, because different societies have different rights for different uses in different jurisdictions. Plus, the European tradition in which most societies have roots focuses more on the inherent rights of creators. It is possible, although not especially likely, that a creator could argue that the use of his or her song in an AI-generated work is a violation of their moral right to their work. More likely, European societies will find themselves at odds with publishers over who can license mechanical rights to copy songs for the purposes of training generative AI algorithms.
Before then, countries need to agree on some basic regulations for copyright and AI — and much of the conversation in Sofia focused on how to get there. In his speech, Ulvaeus identified “three key priorities that are the anchor of our position”: That AI training be subject to transparency rules; that creators can license their own works; and that creators be guaranteed remuneration.
The first is the big one: Now that it seems clear that at least some generative AI companies have already trained their algorithms on massive number of works, how will anyone figure out who to compensate when that AI creates new works? Any working AI economy has to be transparent. The other two might cause some disagreement within the music business, though. Different countries have different practices about who licenses mechanical rights, and a right to remuneration is a European idea, since it has some potential to operate around existing business contracts.
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06/03/2025CISAC Director General Gadi Oron also gave a speech about the practical side of the organization’s lobbying work. Right now, the most important AI regulation is in the EU, which no one regards as close to perfect but most people seem to think is pretty good. It is already coming under pressure, though, as technology companies push back against some of its permission requirements. This is legislation that was passed already, mind you, and it just shows how big a fight this is going to be. On most of the important issues, labels and other rightsholders are aligned — but they disagree significantly on others. This, too, is likely to involve litigation, legislation and, probably most of all, consternation.
The fear is that the publishing side of the business will come in to arrange deals after labels already have theirs, which limits their negotiating leverage. Maybe. But CISAC’s members have the weight to assert themselves, even though most of them answer to both publishers and songwriters, who don’t always see eye to eye, either. All of the current negotiations to legalize AI are just the beginning.
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