The American Federation Of Musicians has launched a new campaign around AI under the banner Human Made Human Paid. It is calling for “musician consent, credit and compensation” whenever “human art is used for AI development” and it’s part of the performer union’s ongoing attempts to “secure guardrails in upcoming negotiations with the major labels”.
The union is currently negotiating with the majors to agree a new Sound Recording Labor Agreement for its members, which is particularly important for session musicians in the US. AFM says it has “negotiated throughout the year to secure the best possible contract”, but “after four rounds of bargaining sessions, negotiations remain ongoing and stalled as the union pushes for contractual guardrails” in relation to AI.
Those guardrails are becoming all the more important for AFM and its members as the majors - and other record labels and music distributors - start to enter into licensing deals with AI companies.
The union adds, “while major labels publicly warn that AI generated music risks replacing human artists, they simultaneously license their catalogues to AI platforms for massive corporate payouts while paying recording musicians zero”. The new campaign, it adds, “mobilises musicians and supporters to build collective leverage at the bargaining table, in court, and across the industry”.
The union has already sued Universal Music and Warner Music in the US courts in a dispute over how the existing AFM Sound Recording Labor Agreement impacts on the major labels’ AI deals.
The agreement includes a ‘new use’ clause. AFM reckons that applies to this new use of music - meaning its members should be compensated - but the majors have come up with some legal technicalities for why the new use clause is not, in fact, relevant in the AI domain.
In negotiations for a revised union agreement, AFM says there are “three non-negotiable requirements whenever human audio or artistry is used in AI models”.
First, musicians must have “the explicit right to permit or refuse the use of their work for AI training”. Second, “creators must be fully and transparently recognised for their performances”. Third, “musicians must receive fair payment whenever their work generates value in AI systems or licensing deals”.
In addition to that, the union is also seeking “strict contractual safeguards to prevent major record labels from using AI to undercut musician agency, replace human labour or exploit recorded tracks”.
Earlier this week CMU organised all the discussions around music and AI into three big debates - the separate debates regarding: first the obligations of AI companies; second the obligations of labels and publishers; and third what the industry does with all the AI music that is now being released.
AFM’s campaign very much fits in the second debate, it being focused on how the labels that are now doing licensing deals with AI companies share that money with artists, including session musicians.
While the music community is pretty much united when it comes to the obligations of AI companies that utilise existing music - arguing that those companies need to negotiate and secure licenses from the music industry - ever since AI licensing deals have started to be announced by music rightsholders, a division has emerged between artists and songwriters on one side, and labels and publishers on the other.
Organisations representing music creators and performers are all calling for similar things to AFM - ie that labels and publishers should get explicit consent from artists and songwriters before opting their music into any AI deals, while being clear about how the AI deals work and how the money generated will be shared between rightsholders, creators and performers.
There is currently no industry consensus on how that should all work, and things are slightly different for different groups of creators and performers. For featured artists, currently consent, control and compensation around AI mainly depends on the record or distribution contracts they have negotiated with their labels and distributors, and how those labels and distributors choose to interpret those contracts.
For songwriters, in some countries it is collecting societies that are negotiating the AI deals. With Anglo-American repertoire, the publishers are doing a lot of the deal-making, though collecting societies like PRS will also be involved in some way. Therefore UK writers are partly dependent on the terms of their publishing contracts, but also on how the collecting societies decide to manage AI income.
For session musicians - whose performances within existing sound recordings are being used to train AI models which will likely result in less future work - getting any share of the music industry’s AI income likely depends on changes to copyright law or union-led negotiations, like those currently being spearheaded in the US by AFM. Because, as AFM says, in the absence of copyright law reform or union-led deals, session musicians could end up with “zero” when it comes to the AI deals.
On a website set up for its new Human Made Human Paid campaign, AFM concludes, “this initiative unites musicians worldwide in defence of creators’ rights” and “establishes a vital standard for the digital age: if art is human-made, the creator must receive fair compensation, proper credit and explicit consent before their work can be used or automated”.