Prof Snyder's Music Biz News

Here are 10 misconceptions I've read in comments across social media. These are my observations and opinions. You can jump to the part you'd be interested in. 00:00 Intro 00:30 There are established laws, passed by Congress, that regulates ai. 01:29 The government of the US cares about artists and musicians and is working on laws regulating AI and copyrights. 03:34 What is stated in the copyright...

AI Creep: "AI has now slipped into everyday life and we seem less guarded about its use" Performance Rights Organizations, ASCAP, BMI, and SECAN have updated their policies to accept “compositions partially generated.” They will now register and pay royalties for partially AI-generated music, provided it involves a human-led creative process. Composers are trusted to voluntarily reveal how much AI...

Udio wants to be the music industry's "AI good guy". UMG and Udio settled their lawsuit, and the Udio subscribers are pissed off! "Udio will now be a 'walled garden' in which users can only stream their AI creations on the platform, with no ability to export and distribute their works. In response, Udio opened a 48 hour window, ending today 11/4/25, for subscribers to download their music. Otherwi...

YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/CrUlIezY7ug The music biz has always blurred the lines between the real and the fake, like KISS dubbing in the audience on their live album. Will Smith has gotten some brutal press for his use of AI to 'enhance' his audience in a video of him performing. The controversy is exposing some much deeper realizations about the use of AI. "AI fatigue is hitting hard." "AI-g...

Halloween Issue: Stream ripping has been part of music piracy for decades, from copying songs on the radio to cassette, to now when an individual rips music or video from a streaming platform and coverts it into a downloadable file that any user can use offline. If you haven't heard of stream ripping, it's probably because the labels have had some success regulating it. But now it's back in the he...

"...labels to quietly consider licensing arrangements rather than risk exposing gaps in ownership or registration in court." For the discovery process between Udio and UMG, the court agreed that Universal Music Group must: 1. Provide copies of all of the music they claim was infringed, I.E., prove it! 2. Provide all of the record agreements between the label and the artists to determine if UMG act...

"Fans may soon follow virtual personas with the same passion as human celebrities." An AI Musician with millions of streams gets a 3 million dollar contract. An AI Actor worries human actors. Both are seen as threats by human musicians and actors, but does the common person care? This is a case in which a human and AI successfully 'collaborate.' Are there times when AI can be your creative partner...

• The internet is no longer “for humans, by humans.” • "82% of listeners cannot distinguish AI-made music from human-created music" • "The Internet Will Be More Dead Than Alive Within 3 Years, Trend Shows. All signs point to a future internet where bot-driven interactions far outnumber human ones" • 38 percent of (mostly) human-made webpages from 2013 no longer exist, which is the result a process...

Taking a break from AI, copyright law, etc...I dive into the new field of composing music, designed to enhance specific culinary delights. "Scientists Invent this 90-sec Song [Sweetest Melody] to Make Chocolate Taste Better" Research shows that certain instruments make food sweeter, or more bitter. How does your instrument affect taste? Does it work? Researchers say: "We're able to show that we ca...

Suno and Udio are being sued by the labels, but there is another major suit most haven't heard about. Sued by UMG and other labels, Anthropic almost got away with scraping millions of copies of printed music to train AI for free, claiming 'Fair Use.' Until it was exposed, in a similar class action lawsuit by book authors, that Anthropic hid it also scraped printed music from the same LibGen, torre...

Podcast Link Artificial Pop (A-Pop), Music Designers, AI Music Charts, Oh My! The separation between human music and AI music is widening and becoming more obvious. AI now has its own all AI record labels, there will probably be a Billboard AI Chart, the 1st 'Music Designer' who uses Suno is signed to a record deal, A-Pop (Artificial Pop) is becoming as thing. Meanwhile humans are looking at creat...

Link to YT video People use AI (SUNO, UDIO) to create songs comprised of real musicians' copy-protected works. It's blatant copyright infringement, hidden by laundering copyrights so they can't be traced to the original owners. Here is what you need to know: Money Laundering Al Capone used to run money made from bootlegging and other crimes through laundromats to 'clean' money, make it legitimate,...

$2 billion is lost to streaming fraud each year, representing about 7-10% of total streaming royalties, and growing. Streamfarms, consisting of AI bots, and more likely people in developing countries PRETENDING TO BE AI BOTS, are paid to rapidly inflate the number of streams of a song, as well as likes, follows, and playlists, pushing both human and fake artists to the top. Other artists find mark...

Link to video: https://youtu.be/hJeu5KvgBww "You have to die before they think you are worth anything". Jimi Hendrix The deaths of the greatest generation of rockers, is bringing in millions of dollars, and the industry has learned to cash in. Even just a rumor of a death, like when Paul McCartney was supposed dead and replaced by a double (he wasn't), can result in big boosts in sales and streams...

From the days of hipster musicians touring living rooms, to the present with major acts playing in backyards and bowling alleys, artists are skipping large venues and thinking small, the stage wherever they can strap on a guitar and play. With fans having to finance tickets to go to concerts, the trend is for the artists to go to them. Bands like All American Rejects achieved over 4 Million dollar...

Jonesy believes that every aspiring musician should be given a kitten before the first music lesson! In this podcast, Jonesy the cat points to famous DJ and producer deadmau5: "While cats may sometimes be destructive, deadmau5 is a fan of having feline pals around." As cat-dad to Peanut, Dizzy and Dolly, even though they may be a pain at times, he believes that's 'The price of a cat'. And surely P...

[Warning...this vid is a little philosophic] While watching an interview of David Gilmore about his newest album, Luck and Strange , I was reminded that music is a gift to humans. That AI will never wait for years to finish a song, always looking for that special something it needs to complete it. That AI will never be visited by a Muse. That AI will never experience music. The Cambridge dictionar...

Podcast at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOzs8lbX9g4 1 - Courts just opened the door for AI to copy copyrighted material under Fair Use, as long as they purchase 1 copy. 2 - The First Record Label to Exclusively Feature AI Artists: IT'S ALL FAKE. Artists, Music, Backstories, Videos...everything. 3 - "There's No Going Back!" 'Deezer' Chief Innovation Officer. Sources at https://snydersmusicbiznew...

A former exec at Meta (Facebook) said "...asking for permission from rights owners to train models would 'basically kill the AI industry in this country overnight.' " In 1997, it was the new technology, MP3s, used by Napster, that the labels said would kill Music. Back then the labels sued Napster, Kazaa, etc; today the labels are suing Suno and Udio. Is history repeating itself? Lot's of parallel...

A former exec at Meta (Facebook) said "...asking for permission from rights owners to train models would 'basically kill the AI industry in this country overnight.' " In 1997, it was the new technology, MP3s, used by Napster, that the labels said would kill Music. Back then the labels sued Napster, Kazaa, etc; today the labels are suing Suno and Udio. Is history repeating itself? Lot's of parallel...

Your Fav Radio DJ Might Not Be Human! Good news is radio listenership is reported to be good...but who are we listening to? For 6 months, listeners to a radio station had no idea that the DJ they were listening to, wasn't human. AI DJs are already popping up on the radio across the planet, replacing humans or serving as live sidekick/cohosts. "If a robot can blend in for half a year without anyone...

For those who want to know about the significance of masters in the recording industry, here's a little dive into the background and history of artists, record labels, and the fight for masters ownership. In what has been described as a brilliant strategy, Taylor Swift devalues her first 6 albums by rerecording them and then, as the songwriter, denied anybody licensing the originals in movies or c...

The Adele / Guinea Pig Experiment https://youtu.be/1Cjo8p8pe8U AI version of Jonesy the cat introduces and ends the podcast Jonesy's Cat-Shit Crazy Music-Biz News, is that scientists exposed 2 groups of Guinea Pigs to Adele's 'I Miss You' for 7 days. The purpose to see how compression/loudness affects hearing. One group recovered in 1 day. The other group of Guinea Pigs now have long-term hearing...

"It's about legacy, justice and the future of artist ownership." Salt and Pepa are suing Universal Music Group for the rights to the recordings of their hit songs. UMG is Pushing Back by taking down their music from streams. Copyright law does allow artists to reclaim ownership of their recordings after 35 years, but UMG says they were employees and so the songs are work-for-hire and they don't wa...

Can Great Music Rise Above the Slop? [WARNING: May Be Depressing For Musicians] The Dead Internet Theory: "AI-generated material will eventually flood the internet so thoroughly, that nothing human can be found. " The ocean of music is filling with AI slop. Major artists flood the streams with tons of remixes, altered versions, and clips of the same song/album. New artists try to get attention by...