An app is advertising with an AI knock-off of Daisy the Great's song, and the band can't make it stop

Indie band Daisy the Great posted on Instagram on 20 Oct 2026 that an app is "stealing our song with horrible fake AI version". According to Paste, the band, led by Kelley Dugan and Mina Walker, say a person or company has been using an AI-generated track called "old cassette" in ads for an app called ADHD Vision. The track keeps the melody of "The Record Player Song" and swaps in altered lyrics, which the band call badly written. They say it has gone on for "the past many months", that they keep getting messages about it, and that so far they are struggling to stop it.

The app sells "8D audio", the headphone effect that makes a song seem to circle your head, as a way to help people with ADHD when they feel overwhelmed. Paste points out that 8D audio is older than generative AI. ADHD Vision did not respond to Paste's request for comment. Neither Paste nor The AI Musicpreneur, which also covered the post, says which ad networks the ads ran on.

Why this song?

The melody is the thing being copied, and it's a melody people already know. The AI Musicpreneur notes that "The Record Player Song" was the band's debut single in 2017, and that the 2021 remix with AJR reached No. 6 on Billboard's Alternative Airplay chart and passed 270 million views on TikTok. Putting that melody in an ad would normally mean licensing the composition from its writers, which is what Meta's own ad rules require (more below). By the band's account, the advertiser generated a new recording of the same tune instead.

Is a copied melody actually protected?

Yes, and AI changes nothing here. The U.S. Copyright Office treats a song as two separate works: the musical composition (melody, rhythm or harmony, plus lyrics), owned by its writers, and the sound recording, which is one fixed performance of it. Re-recording a song gives you a new sound recording. It doesn't give you rights to the composition, and new lyrics don't change the melody.

The ad platforms' own rules say the same. Meta's ad standards state that advertisers using music must secure licences for sound recordings and/or musical compositions. They also say ads can be rejected or removed after a rights holder reports them. Google's ads policy bans ads that use copyrighted content in a way that infringes copyright, and says an ad may be disapproved after a complaint.

Where the streaming playbook stops

Streaming services have built processes for AI misuse. Spotify, for example, will remove music that impersonates an artist's voice without permission, after the artist or someone acting for them files a claim through its legal form. But that policy is about voices. It says nothing about copied melodies, and an ad isn't a release on a streaming service anyway. The track here doesn't need to sound like Dugan or Walker to do the job. It only needs listeners to recognise the tune.

What artists are saying

The band's main complaint isn't that AI was involved. It's that someone is profiting from their song without asking. Paste reports they called it blatantly stealing and butchering their song "for profit without our permission". Other musicians see it the same way. One independent artist on X argued that putting an unapproved AI version of someone's song in an ad is plain theft, just with better production. That framing is right. The tool used doesn't decide whether it's infringement. Who owns the composition does.

For working musicians this hits income and control. A sync fee is one of the few lump-sum payments an indie writer can get. A soundalike skips that fee. It also puts the song's best-known hook behind a product the band never chose to endorse, aimed at listeners who already know the song.

What can a band do?

This is general information, not legal advice. Rules differ by country, and Facebook's own help page notes it can't give legal advice. These are the routes we could confirm on the platforms' own pages:

• Document everything first. Save screen recordings of each ad, the advertiser's page, ad URLs and dates, and the messages fans send you. Google asks for the specific URLs of what you're reporting, not a home page. Keep a dated record of your original composition (lyric sheet, session files, release date) so you can show the melody is yours.
• Meta (Facebook and Instagram ads). Meta's ad standards send rights holders to its Intellectual Property Help Center, or to an application for its Brand Rights Protection tool. Facebook's copyright page links to a copyright report form and a separate help article on reporting an ad for IP infringement.
• Google Ads. The copyright policy sends complaints through Google's legal troubleshooter, and only the copyright owner or an authorised representative can file a DMCA notice. Google asks for a separate notice for each product the content appears on.
• Bring in whoever controls the composition. The forms ask for the owner or someone authorised to act for them. If a publisher or administrator controls your share of the song, involve them early.
• Know what a lawsuit requires. In the U.S. you have to register a U.S. work before you can sue for infringement, and registered works may be eligible for statutory damages and attorney's fees. If your songs aren't registered, register them before you need to.

What we think

This case looks like an AI story, but it's really about enforcement. The law is clear and the ad policies say the right things. What breaks down is the process. Each takedown is a manual notice, filed per platform and per ad. Meanwhile a model can produce a fresh "old cassette" for almost nothing, and the advertiser can upload it again.

Our view is that this shifts the economics of sync in a way nobody has priced in yet. Licensing a known hook used to cost money, and that cost kept most advertisers honest. Generating a soundalike now costs close to nothing, and the risk lands on the writers. They have to spot the ad, collect proof and file reports, often while the campaign keeps running. Labels and big publishers have legal teams for this. A two-person indie band has a group chat full of fan screenshots.

In our view, the losers are unsigned and self-published writers whose songs went viral without anyone building rights infrastructure around them. The winners, for now, are advertisers betting that most indie bands won't follow through, and the ad platforms, which keep earning from an ad until someone reports it. If AI soundalikes become common in ads, the fair fix is for ad networks to treat "this ad uses my composition" as its own claim type, with a deadline, rather than one more general IP ticket. Spotify already gives voice impersonation its own named route. Melodies used in ads deserve at least that much. Until then, the best protection an indie writer has is registering songs before they blow up.