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Generative AI - music rights & training licensing
What it is
The question of whether and on what terms recorded music and compositions may be used to train generative AI models, and what rights holders should be paid for it
It spans two distinct issues - consent and payment for training data, and ownership of AI-generated output that imitates a voice, style or composition. Indian copyright law has no specific provision, so the position is being tested through litigation and licensing negotiation
Impact on industries
- A new revenue line needing no new creation - catalogue becomes a licensable training asset, and rewards rigorous metadata and rights registration
- Unlicensed training is already widespread, so rights holders are negotiating after the fact, from a weaker position than a clean licensing market would give
- AI-generated music floods the same pro-rata pool, diluting per-stream rates for human creators however the training question is settled
- The legal position in India is unsettled - no statutory carve-out for text and data mining, and no decisive precedent, so outcomes depend on litigation still in progress