AI Companies Can't Stop Stealing Music
I'm begging you to just pay artists
Welcome back to Can’t Get Much Higher, the internet’s favorite place for music and data. If you enjoy this newsletter, check out my book Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. It’s a data-driven history of popular music that I wrote as I spent years listening to every number one hit in history. Now, let’s talk about how AI companies continue to steal intellectual property.
AI Companies Can’t Stop Stealing Music
By Chris Dalla Riva
A few years ago, people noticed that if you asked the AI chatbot Claude for song lyrics, it would readily return them to you. This was a problem for the company behind Claude, Anthropic.
Nearly every popular song lyric you come across is copyrighted, meaning whoever wrote the words gets to choose if someone else can use those words and, if so, how they are compensated for that usage. To use the word “word” just once more: If you want to print some of the words from The Replacements’ “Color Me Impressed” in your book, you need to both get permission from and compensate songwriter Paul Westerberg.
Anthropic and many of their competitors, like OpenAI, were not doing this. To try to placate rightsholders, they stopped their respective chatbots from returning lyrics. Now, if you prompt Claude or ChatGPT for song lyrics, they will tell you that’s not allowed.
So, the problem has been solved, right? AI companies now respect copyright and compensate artists for the usage of their work? Not exactly.
First, despite some licensing agreements being signed, the music industry and AI companies are still at odds. Whether chatbots will display copyrighted material or not doesn’t negate the fact that copyright holders want to be compensated for the fact that their music and lyrics were used to train AI models.
Second, many chatbots are still displaying copyrighted material. If I, for example, ask ChatGPT for the lyrics to “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac, it lets me know that it “can’t provide the full lyrics to ‘Landslide’ by Fleetwood Mac due to copyright restrictions.” But if you ask it how to play “Landslide,” it’s happy to provide chords, tabs, and even lyrics.
This is copyright infringement. “Landslide” was written by Stevie Nicks. If you use “Landslide” in a movie, you need her permission. If you print sheet music for “Landslide,” you need her permission. And, yes, if you have your chatbot spit out the tabs for “Landslide,” you also need her permission.
While Claude is a bit more careful not to provide the music because “the arrangement is copyrighted,” Google’s Gemini will provide you with basically the same thing as ChatGPT.
Unless all of these companies have struck deals with music publishers, they shouldn’t be displaying the music or lyrics to songs in most contexts. Permission must be granted. Fully licensed music-learning sites have licenses and compensate artists. When they lose those licenses, the tabs, lyrics, and chord progressions disappear.
Patents = Good. Copyrights = Bad.
As AI companies argue that they should be able to hoover up every piece of copyrighted material in history without compensation because it is fair use, you might assume that they just don’t really believe in intellectual property in general. Oddly, that’s not the case.
OpenAI, for example, has filed scores of patents and trademarks. They also enforce those intellectual property rights. Just last year OpenAI won a lawsuit because they said a company named “Open Artificial Intelligence” was infringing on its trademark.
I understand the urge to only believe in intellectual property rights when they are convenient for you, especially when you think you are building a digital god. But it’s possible to lead a technological revolution while still compensating rightsholders accordingly.
Spotify proves a nice example of this. Despite all the criticisms levied against the Swedish streaming giant, they secured licenses before launching their service commercially. Was this slower than if they just pulled a Napster and paid no one? Of course. But they still were able to revolutionize how music is listened to while paying artists.
I don’t mean to suggest that Spotify is as complex a technology as ChatGPT. In fact, monitoring what chatbots output seems more akin to whack-a-mole than anything else. No matter how many safeguards you put in place, they’re probably going to still spit out copyrighted material.
I also don’t mean to suggest Spotify’s revolution in music listening will be as consequential as OpenAI’s revolution in artificial intelligence. But we can value the importance of human artistic output—both intellectually and financially—while still pushing technology forward.
A New One
"Spring Summer" by Smerz
2026 - Electronic
When Pitchfork declared Smerz’s “You got the time and I got the money” the second-best song of 2025, I was confused. I’m pretty tapped into all things music. Who was Smerz? Then I clicked play. I was missing out. The Norwegian duo could entrance you with a single synth and simple couplet (e.g., “Baby, can I see you naked / Even though I love how you dress.”)
With a drum loop that sounds like it was lifted from Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” their latest track “Spring summer” sees them exploring similar territory. It’s mostly just a synth and a half-spoken vocal that don’t overstay their welcome. But as soon as it ends, you’ll be compelled to hit play again.
An Old One
"Better Be Good To Me" by Tina Turner
1984 - Rock
My friend Ken and I have been listening to an album every day this year. I recount the last week of listening each Tuesday in this newsletter. A few weeks ago, I detailed our journey listening to comeback albums. One of those comebacks was Tina Turner’s Private Dancer. Despite not being a fan of the production on the record, I was reminded of two things. First, few are more compelling on the microphone than Tina Turner. Second, Turner’s rendition of the Holly Knight co-write “Better Be Good To Me” still rips.
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Best part of this is that the tab is wrong.
Been arguing against music vs machine since 1983 when we replaced a drummer on a session. The virtuoso musician was the canary in this coal mine. Preached to unions and industry companies. Now that they know it’s coming for everyone, they’re perhaps ready to put some guardrails around this runaway train. Let’s at least start with a mandatory label. When you know it’s not human, audiences react differently. When you know how the magic trick is done, it loses its “wow.” If it’s a Suno song, sorry, you didn’t write it.