We are the music makers

Topic

Artist-rights

  • Tupac's estate v. Drake: the AI diss track that tested publicity rights for the dead

    Tupac Shakur's estate sent Drake a cease-and-desist over the AI-voiced "Taylor Made Freestyle" and he pulled the track from Instagram and X within days. He folded without a court testing the estate's claim, and under California law as it stood then, a song was exactly the kind of work the dead's publicity right exempted. California's AB 1836 has since closed much of that gap.

    Artist rightsvia California Senate Judiciary Committee

  • Bad Bunny vs. "NostalgIA": when the artist says no to an AI hit

    A Chilean producer recorded a track with AI voices made to sound like Bad Bunny, Justin Bieber and Daddy Yankee, and it went viral on TikTok. Bad Bunny told fans who liked it to leave his WhatsApp channel, and the creator says Apple Music and Spotify then pulled versions of it. Nobody has said which rule was applied, which is the real story: without a law covering voice, takedown decisions are left to platforms.

    AIvia Página 7

  • 'Dark Horse': how a $2.8M verdict against Katy Perry was wiped out over an unoriginal ostinato

    The Ninth Circuit has upheld the decision to throw out a jury's $2.8 million copyright verdict against Katy Perry, holding that the eight-note figure 'Dark Horse' shares with Flame's 'Joyful Noise' is built entirely from commonplace musical elements. The opinion is the clearest plain-English account yet of how courts separate a song's building blocks from what a songwriter can own.

    Artist rightsvia U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

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