SoundExchange Releases Registry of Tracks Authorized for AI Use — Too Little, Too Late?
Photo Credit: Microsoft Copilot
SoundExchange is developing a global artificial intelligence (AI) registry for sound recording creators and rights owners. But most AI companies have scraped copyrighted data already to train their models. Is this too little, too late?
SoundExchange President & CEO Michael Huppe shared the information during a discussion with artist Timbaland about music rights at the Fast Company Innovation Festival in Manhattan last week.
This new registry will provide a much-needed resource for creators and rights owners to protect their rights related to the use of their content in AI models. It will allow them to reserve those rights, if they so choose, against training by AI algorithms. While U.S. law does not require such a reservation to protect creators’ rights, the global registry will be another tool to help AI companies properly handle their training data and to help facilitate similar protections in Europe and elsewhere.
SoundExchange says it plans to launch this registry in Q1 2025, as an evolution of systems purpose-built by SoundExchange for the collection and distribution of recording royalties. The registry will utilize SoundExchange’s authoritative and comprehensive international standard recording code (ISRC) database. Companies building AI training models will be able to reference the database of authorization declarations before ingesting recordings.
“The rapid proliferation of companies building and leveraging AI music models demands creators have an ability to declare easily whether or not they want their work used in that process,” says SoundExchange CEO Michael Huppe. “Our driving mission is to simplify the music industry and protect the value of music.”
“because of our role in the music industry and our authoritative data, SoundExchange is in a unique and trusted position to create an AI sound recordings registry. We see this as another opportunity to bridge the information gap while keeping control in the hands of creators and rights owners and providing AI companies with a centralized resource for researching consent.”
Record labels and other rights owners would still have the ability to undertake a reservation of rights individually with each AI company. The SoundExchange AI registry will supplement that ability and facilitate economies of scale in the notification process. The database will be a voluntary tool, and rights owners will maintain all legal rights to their recordings regardless of their listing in the registry.
While the effort is a noble one, it feels a bit like creating a registry of horses to ride after they’ve already been let out of the barn. AI companies like Anthropic are arguing in court that training their AI models on copyrighted music falls under “fair use,” with the outcome of that argument remaining to be seen.
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