We are the music makers

Topic

Ai-music

  • Michael Smith gets 18 months, and the Copyright Office finally asks how streaming fraud works

    Michael Smith, who used AI-generated songs and bot accounts to drain streaming royalty pools, was sentenced to 18 months and ordered to forfeit about 8.09 million dollars. The next day the US Copyright Office published a public inquiry into streaming fraud, with comments due 23 Nov 2026. For artists it is the first official place to put on record what fraud costs them.

    Industryvia U.S. Copyright Office, Federal Register

  • Italy's competition regulator puts Suno's terms of service on trial

    Italy's competition and consumer authority (AGCM) has opened an unfair-terms investigation into Suno, case CV278. It flags six groups of clauses, including a moral-rights waiver, a vague copyright licence, unilateral price and service changes, and US arbitration. Nothing has been found illegal yet, but these are the clauses most creators never read.

    Artist rightsvia Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM)

  • Google Flow Music now exports the tools you describe as VST3 and AU plugins

    Since 6 Oct 2026, Google Flow Music lets producers describe an instrument or effect in plain language and load it into their DAW as a VST3 or AU plugin. It is macOS-only, limited to synth and effects processing, and runs inside a Google host plugin, which matters more than the launch framing suggests.

    Releasesvia Google

  • Sony has asked for 260,000 AI deepfakes to be taken down, and indie artists have no Sony

    Sony Music has now asked platforms to remove more than 260,000 AI tracks imitating its artists, up from 135,000 at the end of March. That is roughly 20,000 requests a month, which is a full-time enforcement operation. An independent artist facing the same impersonation has a report form, a distributor and their own spare time.

    Industryvia Spotify for Artists Support

  • What copyright protects in a song, and what it doesn't: a guide for the AI 'sounds like' era

    Read together, the Katy Perry, Ed Sheeran and Mariah Carey cases draw a clear line in US law: a melody and an original selection and arrangement of elements can be owned, while scales, common chord progressions, rhythms and genre clichés can't. Style isn't copyrightable either. For producers working with reference tracks and AI, that makes the singer's voice a bigger risk than the vibe.

    Artist rightsvia US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

Subscribe to We are the music makers

One email a week: the music-tech and AI-in-music news that mattered, and what we think about it.

Sign-ups open soon.