We are the music makers

Topic

Artist-rights

  • Mariah Carey won sanctions against a Christmas-song plaintiff, and Dua Lipa beat 'Levitating': 2025's failed plagiarism suits

    In March 2025 two federal judges threw out song-theft suits against Mariah Carey's 'All I Want for Christmas Is You' and Dua Lipa's 'Levitating', both because the shared material wasn't protectable. Carey's judge went further and sanctioned the plaintiffs' side; in December the bill came to about $92,300 for Carey alone. For songwriters thinking of suing, the lesson is to filter out the building blocks before anyone files.

    Artist rightsvia US District Court for the Central District of California (via Digital Music News)

  • Two answers to AI voices: Céline Dion disowns the fakes, while Sevdaliza licenses hers for a 50% split

    Céline Dion's team has warned fans that "unsanctioned" AI recordings using her voice and name are circulating on streaming services. In 2023 Sevdaliza went the other way, opening an AI model of her voice, Dahlia, to anyone on the Myvox platform for half the royalties. Both are legitimate choices, and each depends on consent being written down somewhere a platform can act on it.

    AIvia Dazed

  • The silent album: how 1,000 UK artists turned an empty studio into a campaign

    Is This What We Want?, out on 25 February 2025, is 12 recordings of empty studios and performance spaces, credited to more than 1,000 musicians, whose track titles spell out a message to the UK government. It landed on the day the government's AI copyright consultation closed. As a piece of artist activism it is unusually well designed, and the design is worth copying.

    Industryvia Is This What We Want? (artists' campaign)

  • The Beatles' "Now and Then" won a Grammy with AI, but the AI didn't make Lennon's voice

    "Now and Then" won Best Rock Performance at the 2025 Grammys. The machine learning behind it separated John Lennon's real vocal from a late-1970s home demo; it did not generate a voice. That distinction is what kept the record inside the Recording Academy's human-authorship rules, and it is the line the industry should be arguing about instead of "AI or not".

    AIvia Recording Academy (GRAMMY.com)

  • FKA twigs built a digital twin of herself, then told the Senate artists must control it

    At a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the draft NO FAKES Act on 30 April 2024, FKA twigs said she had spent a year building an AI version of herself that speaks in her voice, and argued the line between a useful tool and a theft is whether the artist controls it. Her label's CEO, sitting beside her, argued the new right should be transferable. That tension is the real story.

    Artist rightsvia Tech Policy Press

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