IMPF, the global organisation for independent music publishers, has distributed a set of key principles that it wants songwriter collecting societies to embrace as they enter into licensing negotiations with AI companies. It follows last week’s statement in which the IMPF urged its own members to vow to never enter into any AI licensing deals that do not value song rights and recording rights equally.
The indie publishers are becoming much more vocal about the licensing of AI platforms and models as the majors start to announce licensing deals with companies like Udio and Suno.
While it’s good that AI firms that previously claimed they didn’t need licences from the music industry are starting to come to the negotiating table, there are fears that AI business models are now being developed that will favour the majors over independent labels and publishers, and individual music creators.
Generative AI is “rewriting the rules of the music ecosystem at speed and scale we have never seen before”, a new principles document from IMPF declares. For indie publishers and the songwriters “this shift brings both opportunity and profound risk”. A key risk is that, “without clear licensing frameworks”, many rightsholders will be “excluded from the economic value their works generate”.
With song rights, some repertoires will be licensed to AI companies by music publishers and others by collecting societies, mainly depending on music industry conventions in different countries.
As a result, the AI deals negotiated by the majors include some song rights, and the indies will be looking to do similar deals, either directly or through organisations like IMPEL. However, the publisher deals will exclude those songs where the relevant rights are controlled by collecting societies.
Which is why IMPF’s new principles document addresses those societies. It is urging them to “take decisive steps to safeguard the future of music and ensure human creativity is not left behind”. As “key partners for independent music publishers”, IMPF goes on, the collecting societies “are central to building fair and sustainable solutions, and IMPF stands ready to support them in this mission”.
A key demand from the publishers is that the societies ensure there is “parity in compensation between the sound recording and the underlying musical composition”. Which means the separate recording copyright and song copyright that is contained within any one track used in AI training should earn more or less that same.
With streaming income, up to 80% of the money that flows into the music industry goes to the recording, something that has been widely criticised by songwriters and indie publishers over the years.
It’s not clear how the majors intend to allocate the money generated by their AI deals to their respective recording and song catalogues, but songwriters and indie publishers are adamant that with AI income it should be a 50/50 split.
Elsewhere, the IMPF document distinguishes between ‘training-based' and 'exploitation-based’ licensing, urging societies to ensure songwriters and publishers receive licensing income when their works are used to train generative AI models, but also when any new AI-generated works subsequently make money from being synced, streamed or played in public.
It also makes additional demands around things like transparency and moral rights, saying that societies must “require full disclosure of training datasets and usage logs”, and “prevent outputs that distort, demean or misrepresent a creator’s work or reputation”.
Finally, the publishers also say that collecting societies should be “prepared to pursue litigation, not as a last resort, but as a vital tool to establish precedent and compel fair licensing”, something Germany’s GEMA and Denmark’s Koda are already doing.
“This is not only about protecting revenue streams”, the IMPF's document concludes. “It is about defending the integrity of human creativity and ensuring that the music ecosystem evolves on fair and sustainable terms, with collecting societies leading the way”.