Is AI the End of Indie Artists? ft. Top Music Attorney

AI is obviously causing a lot of emotional triggers, fear, anxiety, uncertainty. Are indie artists f***ed. is it all over? I'm not buying it. Don't let it hold you back. With that being said, let's talk about all the things today. AI is the unavoidable music industry topic of 2026. Fully generated songs, flooding platforms, royalty pools getting diluted, AI beats, AI lyrics, voices getting straight up cloned, and Timbaland is doing stuff. And on top of all that, the biggest AI music companies in the world are being accused of training their models on artist music without permission. And that's exactly why we brought in Miss Crystal, better known online as Top Music Attorney. No one else was gonna take action. As always, we see lawyers filing lawsuits on behalf of the major labels, and no one's doing anything to help independent artists. So I just couldn't sit by. Miss Crystal is an entertainment lawyer. She's an independent artist herself, and she's leading the class action lawsuits against Suno and Udio on behalf of independent artists. So we brought her on today to figure out what the f*** is going on, and what do we actually need to be paying attention to? This is cutting-edge stuff to protect creators, because the AI companies want the judges to rule. It's okay to take everyone's music. Pretend that it's this thing called fair use. It is not. To be clear, even if you would never use AI to help make your music, this is affecting you, and you cannot afford to ignore the world being built around you. The royalty pool on Spotify is everyone dumps into the same thing. Suno every day generates roughly 7 million songs. About 100,000 tracks are pouring into Spotify. However you feel about AI music, what we're saying is just human creators are getting crushed out. And that's why I urge you to pay attention to this conversation, so you can stay informed and stay protected. Because the majors are making deals, the platforms are making policies, the AI companies are training their models, and the music industry has a funny way of making the rules first and letting the indies feel the consequences later. Independent artists get left out, always.

In the current state of the music business, AI is obviously causing a lot of emotional triggers, fear, anxiety, uncertainty amongst the artist community, specifically indie artists. So I want to just get us kicked off with like, are indie artists fucked because of AI, or like what's the is it all over? Yeah. Of course it's not all over. I'm gonna start with this because here's the thing. We talk about all the drama and all the bad things that are happening. That's part of what it is to talk about the newsy things, okay? But at the end of the day, like I'm an artist myself. I'm independent, and I've you know done this for a long time. So I'm kind of in the same boat on just I understand there's yet more reasons to make it difficult to be independent and more importantly, uh you know, successful, sustained independent artists and all that. I'm not buying it, don't let it hold you back. With that being said, let's talk about all the things today. Yeah, I love that.

So there's a little bit of optimism still. Yes. And I think you know, Henry and I have been very bullish on artists utilizing AI tools to run their business, right? We've shied away somewhat, to be honest, about like how artists should or should not be utilizing AI in the creative process and actually making the music. So I do want us to maybe shed some light on like our opinions, but for you, you are creative as well. Are you pro-AI music, like super anti-AI music? Like, where do you stand creatively? Fully generated versus as a tool, all those things. Yeah, well, look, I'm a lawyer, so I'm gonna give you the it depends. But here's Sure. Damn it. there's a huge line of, you know, if you use AI as a tool, if you're using it for mixing and mastering, or all the way over here, if you're using it for, you know, AI generated songs, 100%. There's no human element to it.

And I've gotten the bad rap of being completely anti-AI, which is not the case. And it has to do with our class action lawsuits that we filed on behalf of independent artists, which has to do with the theft. That's the thing we're fighting, the theft. Um, but actually, no, I I I think as far as my biggest concern with artists is if you are using these platforms that are fingerprinting you as soon as you make an AI song, which is important because if you're a producer, if you're, you know, a vocalist and you're going in to just use a Suno type of platform to finish your song. Well, that final product is an AI song now, according to the fingerprinting, which is then shared with all the other platforms. So I'm kind of concerned more so about just, you know, if someone doesn't want to be identified as an AI artist, AI content, like there's things about in the creative process that I care about. So that's why we talked about this so much. So so unpack the whole fingerprinting thing. Because I I'm admittedly a novice in this space. You probably have done way more research on like the state of AI and music. I'm still like kind of one of those old head laggards, to be honest.

Like I know it's important for artists to think about. I know that I, you know, hear from industry insiders that the biggest producers and biggest songwriters, like they're using these platforms too. Like it's it's being very like widespread in the industry. So explain fingerprinting, because I don't know it, so I'm assuming there's a lot of people that might not know exactly what you mean. In the last year, the biggest platforms like Suno, they announced that and and Udio as well, they announced that there's this fingerprinting now that happens from the moment you create the song. And so we go, well, they're tracking it now, so now you know they're gonna send that to social media platforms, right? So we go, why does that matter though? And the biggest thing that I kept coming back to is it matters is you know, again, if you just had one of these platforms finish your song, it's not truly a hundred percent AI generated song. And someone very uh well, much smarter than me once talked about how, like in the AI conversation, it shouldn't just be so black and white, because again, like what are we talking about? Did you go to Chat GBT and say, you know, I have all these feelings today about a heartbreak that I had, and I want to figure out a way to express that. And so then you have the AI kind of guide you through the process, but then you come, you know, well, up with all the ideas where you take it a step further and actually write some lyrics.

You see what I'm saying? So I think it's important to talk about what are we saying in the you know, how are we using the AI for sure? And so if your song is indeed fingerprinted, what are the ramifications today? And I know this is like constantly changing, and so this is maybe just like the tip of the iceberg here. But if Suno fingerprints your track because you finished it using their platform, what are the consequences on social, uh monetization-wise, you know, ownership wise? Because that's what I think people are most probably curious about. One, the disclosure piece. If you guys have been following Deezer right away, came out, you know, a year and a half ago and started tagging AI generated content. So I go, well, in the most literal way on a DSP, like Deezer, which is you know a competitor to Spotify. If you don't want people knowing that you're using AI, which I know some people care about, you're gonna get exposed. That's one thing to consider.

Now, as far as uh, you know, is Suno gonna come knocking on your door and say you owe me money. Well, this always goes back to the terms of service for the platform. So that's why on our channel, I do a uh uh, you know, a look through all the time with like the SUNO contracts, and I go, what does it say? Do you own it? How does that work? And then we get a little in the weeds on there is a difference whether Suno is saying you own it and whether you have copyright. These are two different things. How well how? That sounds like I mean, I don't know. From my you know, kindergarten brain here, what is the difference then that they're distinguishing between copyright if if you have the copyright or if you own it? Well, under um the uh copyright law, the copyright, you know, copyright act, it says that your creation has to be human made. Okay, so if you have the machine, if you have AI creating something for you, copyright office is not going to allow you to get a registration. The reason that matters is because let's say you make an AI song that's a hit, and then I go and steal it, and I re-release it under Miss Crystal and become, you know, multi-millionaire. And you go, Well, that's not fair.

I made it. You can't actually go and sue me in a court of law because you need that piece of paper that says you're the copyright owner. So there's a disconnect in like, you know, you you don't have that protection. So that's one way it matters. Now, here's the workaround, which is so long as your AI song has some human component, you know component, it has your words, your voice, you actually do get protection for your human contributions. You don't you don't get anything with the AI, but that's how people are able to get AI partially created songs registered for copyright protection. How do we figure out that split? Like how do we break that down? So, like for I I produce music sometimes, and for example, I might have an idea if I'm working on a beat that I've started myself from my head for like a crazy horn section, and I can't find the right sound, and I might type into Suno, you know, I might even do a voice note and of how I want it to go. And plug it in.

Okay. And add like a stem, you know, or two stems of these AI generated horns into my song. I mean, where's the how do we sit? What percent is me? What percent is AI? What percent do I own? Yes. The really good question. I'm gonna simplify it for you. When you go to file a copyright registration, which I promise it's it seems more overwhelming than it is. I have a tutorial, okay. Just just YouTube it, all right, on on how to register in you know a song that has a lot of. We'll put the link to it in this video right up here. Okay, yeah, let's do it. Um, so so you'll go through the process, and there's this one place in the middle of the application. It goes, is there anything you need to tell us? And so this is where this is where you put, I have a sample, I used AI, like this is the stuff that is not just all your song. That's where you would put it. So there is a training, I break it down, and that's all you would put. You don't have to think through percentages, you don't have to get super complicated. You just go, I got my super duper horn melody from Suno.

I don't know. What am I losing if I do that? Should I like what am I giving up by admitting that? Yeah, is it like approved or denied kind of thing at that point? Like, yeah, great, great question. People are getting caught. Let me at least start with that. Because people are trying to outsmart the system and they're not telling the copyright office. The copyright office has its own technology and it's catching you guys, and then you get your registrations rejected. So, actually, no, it protects you. Because what's gonna happen is that savvy lawyers, they're going to discover that your horns are AI generated. You didn't disclose it on the application, which actually is a reason to come and get your copyright canceled. So here's like practically, you know, you file something for a song, or let's say one of your episodes for you know, one more time podcast. You're in the court and you're you're suing, and guess what? Because you had the copyright registration, you actually can sue for up to $150,000. It's it's quite it's quite the leverage. So anyway, you're in the middle of the litigation, and then savvy lawyer on the other side finds out that you lied on your copyright filing, and they go to get your registration revoked, and you get your case kicked out because you gotta have the registration to be there. So do you see what I'm saying?

Just by by people not disclosing it, it actually hurts you. And actually, I put out a video um for Splice, right? So Splice puts out has samples, but now it does it has an AI sample remix feature. And I put out a video just kind of addressing this. I go look on the um, they call it the certified license. So they give it to you, you know, you producers, you creators to say, hey, this sample is from Splice, you have authority, so you can deal with content ID nightmares, which happens. And anyway, so the issue is that it doesn't say if it's AI generated. So that was our note and feedback to Splice, because they have you know seen our videos and taken our feedback from time to time. Um, but just to be like, if the creator doesn't know you have to disclose it, you can get into trouble. Yeah, so I think you made a social media post about this, uh, and I had it on my list of questions. And because I'm really curious. Do you think that fans care if things are made using AI? And I guess if they do, what do they care about?

Do they care if Henry's horns are AI, or do they just care if the I don't know, like the vocals are AI? Like, how do you feel like fans, you know, where do the fans play into all this and their perception about AI generated music? In my humble opinion, I think that in content creation, you should always think about your fans. And that should also go into whether you use AI and whether you think that your fans will like that or not like it. I just think it's, you know, first of all, it's a good rule of thumb. Like, if you guys are trying to make content, you're gonna crush it if you're like, oh, I think this will help people. Because now it's so much easier to make content because you're thinking about other people, you're not thinking about whether you looked pretty that day or your glass is a little smudgy or whatever. And so it actually helps if you are always in the mind of someone else in the content creation process, which is hard because this is a deeply personal thing that we do in music making. But um, with the AI piece, I think it matters. I think that you should consider whether you know someone would be disappointed because you know, if someone's like, My voice isn't good enough, I'm not good enough, and so I'm going to, as a producer, let's say, I'm gonna use an AI voice. You know, is that it how how might that make someone else feel?

And I feel like it's uh an important factor to consider. Yeah, it makes sense because like someone like a Matt Hanson, who we had on the podcast, his voice is a very big draw to his whole to all to his music, and he's very emotional, he's very real. I think his fans might feel a little betrayed if he started getting into that. But then I think of someone uh there's this guy I love on Instagram named emo realtor, okay, and he he posts these like listings of houses and he's like dancing around them in his like, you know, emo garb with fully Suno AI generated emo like bangers singing about the house and how many bedrooms and bathrooms it has, and people absolutely love it. I know that guy's slinging houses, so for him it doesn't matter as much. Wow. Very good point. And I've seen his content. It's very good. Have you really He's crushing that art that even Miss Crystal seems to. Absolutely. I thought this was some weird Henry algorithm. Because like, you know, parents are in real estate. Like, I don't know.

I'm not sure if that was just he's out here. Um, do you think that obviously like disclosing all of this though is important because eventually the platforms themselves are gonna force artists into disclosure? Because in my mind, we're still in a gray area where people could get away with it and maybe not have to disclose it right now. But it sounds like some of that's coming to an end. So it's like they gotta make the decision, right? Because it's gonna be Do we need to get ahead of this thing. Yeah, because it's gonna be done for them almost, right? It's like they're not gonna have a say in the matter, because if it's fingerprinted, yeah, and they upload it to their distributor and Deezer and Spotify, whoever else wants to catch it and flag it as AI generated, their fans are gonna be like, what the fuck? So you might as well just cross that bridge or or retreat and be human-made only, I guess. I don't know. What what are your thoughts on how to how to approach it? My my firm has relationships with all of the major and and you know, big independent music distributors, right? So the companies that distribute the music because you know, either we're working with them or more commonly we're fighting with them.

And so one thing I can say as far as the behind the scenes is that they are telling us they go, we are having to beef up our AI, you know, detection, and uh, we're doing that because they are getting punished. They're getting punished in all kinds of ways by the DSPs having to do with AI. So that's a different component that we haven't talked about too much. But at least with Spotify, their big update because there was, you know, what's Spotify gonna do? You know, all the royalties are getting diluted for human creators, you know, 100,000 tracks are flooding into uh you know Spotify every single day. Um so Spotify made a big announcement on a few things, but one was oh, we're gonna work with the distributors so that you know, through DistroKid, for example, if you distribute a song, you can disclose. You can disclose. So it's kind of an honor system. So that's you know, uh, maybe maybe maybe we're you know going that way instead of uh the platforms are going to expose creators? I don't know. Yeah, I just I'm curious to see how everyone approaches this, right? Because yeah, like the honor system. I mean, I just think eventually the tech's gonna get good enough to most likely force them into disclosure.

But you know, speaking of kind of the you know, Spotify and distributor relationships, at least last I checked, the royalty pool is getting affected, right? Or is that like how how are royalties being distributed, you know, towards human-made music uh versus AI assisted or AI generated music? Is it all treated the same right now? And what are your thoughts on where it should be headed? The royalty pool on Spotify is everyone dumps into the same thing, which is where the fairly the biggest objection about AI music and the flooding of it comes into play because what is it? Suno every day generates roughly 7 million songs every day. Wow. And and it's estimated about 100,000 tracks are pouring into Spotify. So that's uh human creators aren't gonna be able to keep up. So over time, right? We see the disparity happening. And what was it? Deezer reported, they're coming up on almost 40% of all the music that is you know put on the platform again, all AI generated. So however you feel about AI music, what we're saying is just human creators are getting crushed out, and we're curious what platforms are doing to try to stop that.

Do they even care? We're keeping an eye on it. And the ones the one I would say bandcamp, are you guys familiar with that? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so Bandcamp, you know, a little little bit of the the uh unspoken hero for independent artists, uh with the AI is that they came out, they made an announcement in recent months that they are not allowing AI music whatsoever. They banned it. Everyone should just report they banned it, they encourage everyone to report. So they're taking a pretty hard line on the issue. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, so what does this all mean for indie artists though, right? Because I mean, if that many songs are AI generated, they're you know competing with your human-made music, right? What what does that mean for us? What is your guidance to independent artists as far as like what they actually need to be doing about that, right? Is it uh leaning into their humanness, right? And like just kind of like playing into their humanity. Is it fuck it if you can't beat them, join them and start, you know, making AI music as well to just get your bag if you need it, right?

Like what what do you recommend people do? Because I think that's where everyone's really confused or they're weighing the options here and they're almost like freezing and just don't know what to do. Yeah, well, look, two things. Uh, one is it's it's more ancillary to the if these AI companies came along in order to make this technology available and they stole from everybody, period. They've admitted to doing this, they went onto YouTube and other platforms, as we allege in our complaints. The one thing that independent artists need to do is not let that slide. And the way you don't let it slide is that you know we've actually filed class action lawsuits. And we're six months into both of these cases against Suno and Udio. So that's one. Join, be a part of you know what's happening. Hell yeah. But two, on the I'm I'm DIY before AI, during AI, and not we'll see if there's an after, but DIY. So um sell before you stream is what I call it. And it's this idea that why, you know, we cannot rely, you know, on these platforms. They're a glorified marketing.

It's just a way that you can go and find a song, you know, if that's your desired platform, you love Pandora, you love Spotify. And so I go, fine, if you want to put your music on these DSPs, do that. But do it as a last step. The the the power that you actually have with a hundred fans, fifty fans, um, is way, way more than people even realize. And they just don't take those steps to build the email list and to let people know, hey, I have a new song, I have a new shirt, hey, you can support me. Did you know that you could buy my song for a dollar? Or, as I as I love, this works so well. Or you can pay what you want. This is really powerful. Uh people will pay like 20, 50 dollars for you know, a song because they go, You are so amazing, let me support you. So there's very strong ways to allow you know the DIY model to work for you, regardless of the size of your fan base. I hope you guys are enjoying the conversation. I want to take a quick moment to tell you about our pals at DistroKid. You can't get your music onto streaming platforms without a distributor, and DistroKid is an excellent choice to handle that for you.

For the ridiculously low price of $23, you can upload unlimited music for an entire year that is less than two dollars a month. I tripped on two dollars walking down the street earlier. They have countless features to help you out on your musical journey. One of my favorites is splits. Instead of my collaborators hitting me up all the time saying, Where's my fucking money? I can input everyone's percentage when I upload the music, and DistroKid will handle it. I've personally used DistroKid for many years and can genuinely recommend them as a great tool to get your music out into the world. And if you sign up at omtdistro.com, you'll get 30% off an already insanely low price. This is absolute peanuts for unlimited uploads yearly. We wish you the best with your creating. Let's get back to it. In the class class action lawsuits that you have against these big uh, you know, AI platforms, what is the goal? If you could be in charge of how they compensate artists for like training their models, etc. Like what what is the the end state that you're in search of on behalf of the indie artist community? Sure.

Well, I am in charge. I'm leading you are, yeah. I mean so true. But I understand what I understand what you're asking. So if we had it uh good go exactly as as we wanted, you know, do we want to just take a check and walk away and get everyone paid? Sure. I I would very much like to have something at the end of this. But the reason we did this is because if we didn't, no one else was gonna take action. Because we sat around and we're like looking and we go, boy, everyone's just saying this is fair use. Boy, these companies are just admitting to steal to stealing songs. And so, as always, we see lawyers filing lawsuits on behalf of the major labels, and no one's doing anything to help independent artists. So I just couldn't sit by, and so that's why I kind of threw my hat in the ring and started this whole process. So, in an ideal situation, I want to set case law. That's really important. Right now there is not case law. This is cutting-edge stuff to protect creators because the AI companies want the judges to rule it's okay to take everyone's music, pretend that it's this thing called fair use. It is not.

Um, and that would open the floodgates to incredible mass piracy. So, when I set case law, I would love to get people paid, and I want independent artists to understand that they have such a powerful voice. That's why we're doing this. Do you see a world where we can live in harmony and artists can choose to opt in and let their music be used to train these models and potentially if they're getting compensated for it? And as an artist yourself, would you even consider doing something like that? In the should people have consent? Absolutely. Should you get paid? Right? We've seen that component of these licensing deals. And so if artists want to have a forward-looking, you know, let's do a deal and you can use my music to train your AI. You already did. Great. On the flip side, if you don't want to be part of the training data set, you should be able to opt out. And that's certainly my feeling on it. So in the, well, you know, uh using these platforms, the biggest thing from the terms of service is that they say they're gonna train on your music. So if you upload your song and you go, I just need some vocal ideas, I just need this, I just need that.

You just gave your song to these platforms, you cannot take that back. Yeah. And if you don't care about that, great. That's all I care about. That you know and you voluntarily consented. Yeah, so but what does the financial model look like? What does the compensation like? How do you think that can actually work? Is it, you know, if Henry uploads his music, um, like is it just a flat license fee? Like, you know what I mean? What what what does the model look like in your mind? A lot of these deals in pre-pre-AI. So for my entertainment, you know, law firm, we've been around for over 12 years. And so pre-AI, the way that these deals work is that you have a huge database of songs. And if a company's gonna come in and have that huge database, then typically it's like a pro rata, you get to be a part of that pool. It doesn't mean you're making millions of dollars, but it means you're being respected in that if your music is in fact used in something else, you get paid for that. That's a standard model, and that's you know, likely what we're seeing uh or what's happening with these settlements and these licensing deals.

When it comes to the vocal side of things, I mean, or I guess even production, do you think that artists and creators should start looking at this as a viable like revenue stream as far as like looking at it like in intellectual property that it is, but for other people? Because usually if I'm a singer, I think of my voice as obviously IP for like songs that I make myself or maybe songs that I feature on. This whole AI vocal thing, it is a whole like vocal cloning, like this is a whole new world, right? Do you think it's gonna be a viable part of anyone's business, or what are your you know, predictions on the whole vocal? Did Taylor Swift even just like copyright her voice or just like her likeness or something, right? Yeah, Matthew McConaughey. All right. All right. All right. Yeah, Hey, you owe him money now. I know, no, and actually my shit, we're demonetized on YouTube now, thanks to Miss Crystal. My bad, my bad.

We had a date night for my my lawyers recently, and uh one of the trivia questions was what's something that the boss says all the time, and they say that I say all right, all right. All the time, I'm like, hmm, that's probably not good. I need to work on that. Anyway, so not just Matthew McConaughey on protecting he thinks his voice, you know, but Taylor Swift did the same thing, right? So he goes, Hey, it's Taylor, and then, hey, it's Taylor Swift. These are the trademarks. And so the creative lawyering is that they think, they hope that when there's an AI digital double of her voice, they'll go and file a trademark takedown. It's not the same, you know, hey, it's Taylor, but it is her voice. So it's an interesting argument. We're gonna see if it actually works. But back to your question on, you know, is this a part of the industry? Well, sure, it already is, right? So there's voice swap, for example, and uh Ben Jordan is one of the uh owners, one of the founders. He's actually part of our class action lawsuits as well But anyway, this is like ethically sourced voices where the vocalist signed up for this. They signed up to have their voices used.

They get paid if their voices are used, right? This is a good thing. Yeah. No, I'm just looking at it like, I mean, again, maybe this like do you think all of this still again benefits like the biggest of the big? You know, like is this really applying to our indie artist community? Are they just gonna be getting left out of all of this in your mind? Independent artists get left out always. Yeah, and that's why we are duking it out with these class action lawsuits, because it's like, no, I don't I don't even care if I lose. I'm gonna at least try and say that I that I tried that I tried. You know, but usually what happens in the music industry is that the big publishers, the big record labels, they hire the lawyers, they hire the lobbyists to go and set the law, you know, duke it out in court, and then whatever happens, whatever they agree to, independent artists are just required to follow. And that's something I I very meaningfully, not just right now, with this moment in time with the AI cases, but just like, you know what, that should change. Let's work on that.

Yeah, and you know, a lot of people, or at least I feel like still a lot of people don't understand the major label relationships, like with Spotify, for example. Do you think that the AI platforms are gonna, you know, be in bed with the majors, similar to how the big DSPs are? Like, is that where we're headed? Yeah, there's whispers in in the news that as part of these major label licensing deals, you know, they're getting a little piece of the pie. I believe it. And that's pretty common. It's pretty common if We're going to literally annihilate you with our lawsuit because again, copyright registration, statutory damages, you get into like the hundreds of millions. Um, so you know, we want a little piece of the pie, very common. And actually, I don't know if you guys saw this with uh anthropic. So these were book publishers that sued anthropic over Claude. And um, anyway, they ended up settling for 1.5 billion dollars. You know, there's there's there's a lot of things happening right now in AI land.

Yeah, there are. So, so you know, I I know I wanted to make sure we covered kind of the AI music making thing, but I I feel like it's worth getting Ms. Crystal's opinion on like outside of the music making. I mean, how do you think indie artists should be using AI, right, to help them compete? Because in my mind, I look at it like on the music side and the business side, the majors, you know, they're looking at this shit seriously. I mean, there's Grammy winning songwriters that we know that have told us they're using these platforms to write hits. So, like, we've already covered that on the music making side, and we know for a fact these big major labels and big management companies or whatever, they're using AI to help like drive operational efficiencies within their artist companies. So, what are some kind of like low-hanging fruit ways that you think indie artists can be using, you know, AI tools aside from the like helping them with lyrics, helping them with mixing, mastering, like the music making side? We started the conversation a little bit about the remaking of AI content, right?

So, again, this idea that you go to Suno to get ideas, to get inspiration. The distinction I think we should make is are you literally taking what the AI came up with and not making any changes? You're just re-recording it. And I wouldn't, and I would not recommend that, and here's why. Because these companies don't have cleared songs, when the new songs come out, there's pieces of the original songs in the outputs, right? And so that puts the users at risk that your song contains uncleared, right? Uh yeah, training data set. So what I would say is, you know, for sure, if you are using AI to get inspo, you gotta adapt it and now make it your own. Here's an example. Uh Kat Von D back in 2024, uh you probably are familiar, very famous tattoo artist. She was embroiled in a three-year tortured copyright litigation because she tattooed a portrait, a picture of Miles Davis. And she did such a remarkably good job because she's very talented.

She got sued to filth by the photographer of that picture, and he goes, You copied my picture, copyright infringement. And so this thing ended up going to trial, and the jury found for Kat Von D, which was great. But here's the thing if you look to the pictures side by side, they were pretty much exact. So here's here's how we're gonna apply this to the AI situation. If you have Kat Von D who does an almost exact or exact look-alike song, isn't that copyright infringement? And the answer is no. And it's because she did different shading in a different texture, a different coloring. She did a totally different medium. She didn't take a picture and copy it into another picture. She did a tattoo. So these are kind of the pieces of the analysis with AI now. We go, if you're gonna go to Suno and you're going to create a song, and then you're literally just going to remake the exact same thing with no interpretation of yourself, it's gonna be really difficult for you to claim that you came up with it. And so again, copyright registration issues, but like I said, you don't own the composition.

That composition came from songs that you don't own. So you're actually potentially gonna be in some trouble later on and someone could sue you. It is interesting to do that because you don't have to actually input any of your own music or you know, creativity into the platform that way, as long as you are taking steps to change it enough and be inspired and add your sauce. Yeah, so I know there's some like acts out there that are, you know, I guess still on the floor as far as being, you know, you know, in the legislative process. What are some of the proposed laws that still haven't like made their way through and gotten approved, right? Are there any that people should be aware of that are kind of like on the forefront, but they just haven't, you know, gotten through the whole le uh, I guess, legislative system? Lots of attempts. The no fakes act is one having to do with publicity rights, and so this would be federal. The reason it matters, federal means it covers all of the states, right? And so it'd be very good because it goes, you should be able to control your face, your likeness.

You know, we we covered this recently, how some of these big brands are getting caught because they're running these ads after stealing content creator videos and using AI to change their mouths. And so their mouths are saying different things, and they're using AI to remake their voices, like wild, wild things that's going to get them sued to oblivion. Um, but in any case, that's not okay. So, yes, it's it it uses AI, but you know what we're talking about is someone's voice and their face, and you can't do that. So that's one. Um, and then at the state level, there's you know different things. The Elvis Act, there's uh different things that are already either in progress or passed. Um, you know, I think that we need the federal legislation though, ASAP. Yeah, is the no fakes act like is it likely to succeed? Is it being met with a lot of resistance? I mean, what where is it at in the process? What I'm seeing is that the publicity ones, the ones that most people can understand, right? We don't want your face stolen, your voice stolen.

Most people are on board with that. So this one is headed in the right direction for sure. When we get into things like again, the AI companies and the training without authorization, this is where things are more split. And actually, the White House just you know put out a few weeks ago its AI policy and it's not law, but it's a very strong recommendation to Congress on what it thinks that Congress should do. So in this policy, it had this section having to do with intellectual property. We go, oh, what does the White House have to say about this? And it goes, We think that the training on copyrighted content is fair use, it's okay, you know, but we're gonna leave it to Congress and the you know court system and these cases to figure it out. And I'm like, literally, us setting this case law to say it's not okay matters so very much, even according to the White House. So would case law like replace the need for actual like legislative action for what you're doing with the class action lawsuits, or is there also proposed legislation that needs to kind of follow the suits? In a perfect world, which is what we like to talk about in this conversation, in a perfect world, you would have both.

Okay. Because you have Congress setting law, which is extremely powerful, but then when you do have federal judges, you know, ruled certain ways on your cases, you set case law, and then that impacts and that protects everybody else that comes after. Okay. So it it can work without Congress getting their shit together, but it would be ideal for it to kind of align with the verdict that you're in search of with the class action suits. Yeah. Okay. And look, uh Congress is probably feeling a little conflicted because it needs to try to figure out we need to make sure we stay ahead of all the AI stuff. You know, the rest of the world is beating us. And so who cares? Open the floodgates. And then on the other side is everyone else who's getting crushed. And you know, I uh my my opinion with music is that there is nothing more important culturally to people, every person. Your experience, your love, your connection, everything always goes back to music.

Films cannot survive without music. Do you see what I'm saying? And so it's it's it's uh tough when you see it not being respected. Yeah, even watching our podcast intros without music sometimes is like this sucks, kind of We've been taking the the scoring pretty seriously. The music like can make or break something, and like the wrong song can also fuck it all up. Sure. Uh we haven't asked you guys all episode. Please like, comment, subscribe for bringing you insane value with people like Ms. Crystal, the top music attorney. If you found anything, anything, I mean, you've made it this far. Like, you can like the video, leave a comment, and subscribe. This is how I know you weren't prepared. I was locked in, dude. I was just listening. Um, but anyway, he has one job. I love that. I love that you said earlier you like to end interviews with rapid fire type questions. That's literally what we do every single episode. In the essence of time, this one will be a little shorter. It's called the Rapid Fire Rampage. It's gonna be a very rapid rapid fire rampage. Okay.

Three sections. I'm just gonna do one question from each and see if we can just knock them out of the park. So let's go. The first section is the short answer. What is your number one piece of advice for how indie artists should be thinking about AI right now? It's ancillary. Believe in yourself more than anybody else and any other piece of technology that exists in the world. So when it comes to you know, AI, if you decide that that's not for you and you're not gonna use it, that's okay. If you do use AI, the things that we talked about in the segment is um what you need to keep in mind in protecting yourself and understanding that you are exposed right now using these platforms, because the songs in their training data set are not cleared. And I hope that I hope that lands for people who are using AI right now. Landed for me. Landed. Yeah. The next section is the this or that. I'm gonna give simply give you two choices. You have to pick one. And it is AI or AI. Again, I'm a lawyer, and so I go by definitions.

AI standing for no, she's lawyering you right now, bro. Come on, give it to her. Allen Iverson or No. Artificial intelligence? The with the the real thing. Artificial intelligence or artificial intelligence. Well, I really appreciate your vocal tonality. It's all in the tone. I may have to hire you. Thank you. And uh based on that, I may just have to go with both. Final answer. Final answer. Locked in. Man, I knew she was a lawyer, but like, fuck. She's a lawyer. That's true. She's a real lawyer. Yeah. The last section is the word association, Miss Crystal. I'm gonna say one word, and I just need you to give me the first word that you think of off the top of your head as quickly as you can. There's no correct answer. You were only judged on speed. Are you ready for your word? Sure. Suno. Class action lawsuit. Let's go. Let's go. This has been Miss Crystal. This has been Miss Crystal top music attorney. Man, sign up.

Where can people sign up for the class action lawsuit? Just on your website? Indie AI lawsuit. And people are wondering what does it mean to sign up? You're just filling out a form to get on our list. Really? If and when we win, I have a check to pay you. I know who to contact. Let's go on that. note. Put a link in the description, guys. Yeah, we're getting the fuck out of here. Peace, y'all. See ya.