A new gate is being built around AI-assisted music.
Today it concerns Finland’s official charts. Tomorrow the same principle could influence distribution, radio, playlists, royalty payments and access to the wider music market.
That is why we need to examine it now.
Finland’s new chart rules appear to accept what many of us agree on: generative AI may assist the creative process as long as the recording remains predominantly human-made.
But there is a second condition.
Every AI service used must also be considered properly licensed and lawful.
This means that a song can be written, performed and produced by humans and still be excluded because of the tool used for one part of the process.
Not because the music is insufficiently human.
Because the technology is considered insufficiently licensed.
Licensed by whom?
There is no global licence covering every composer, performer, publisher, producer and record company.
An AI service may have an agreement with one major company but not another. A licence for recordings does not necessarily include the underlying compositions, lyrics, performances or voices.
So when is an AI service licensed enough?
And who decides?
Under the Finnish rules, unclear cases can be decided by a chart committee. Yet creators cannot inspect a model’s complete training data or verify every agreement behind the software they use.
No public, independently verified list of accepted services has been presented.
The creator may therefore be punished for a licensing question only AI companies and rightsholders can answer.
Read IFPI’s international chart principles.
What if “unlicensed” becomes a competitive strategy?
Protecting creators requires consent, transparency and remuneration. Our music must not become free material for someone else’s business.
But consider what could follow.
A powerful music company could license its catalogue to an AI service in which it has a commercial interest while refusing to license a competing service.
The competitor could then be labelled insufficiently licensed.
Music created with that tool could be excluded.
The same market power that prevented the licence would then use the absence of that licence as the reason for closing the gate.
There is no evidence presented here that this has happened. The point is that any credible system must prevent it from becoming possible.
Who defines the standard?
Who verifies compliance?
Must dominant catalogues be offered on fair and non-discriminatory terms?
Are investments and commercial relationships disclosed?
Can an artist or AI company appeal?
Without independent safeguards, copyright protection could be turned into market protection.
The CMO question
Teosto, Finland’s collective management organisation for composers, lyricists and publishers, is separately introducing an AI-rights category. This will allow it to license AI uses of the repertoire it represents.
Teosto did not create the chart rule. The two processes are formally separate.
But their interaction matters.
If chart eligibility depends on licensing, while labels, publishers and CMOs decide which services may license essential repertoires, those organisations may influence far more than remuneration. They may influence which technologies can compete and which human-created songs can reach the market.
DG COMP should look closely
The European Commission’s competition directorate has not publicly assessed the Finnish rules.
But DG COMP has warned about incumbent companies controlling essential AI inputs, extending existing market power into AI and using partnerships to neutralise competitors.
Its principles are fair dealing, interoperability and genuine choice.
Read the competition authorities’ joint statement.
In “Applause Today – Negotiation Tomorrow”, I wrote about our habit of celebrating technology first and negotiating later.
Now we face another risk: allowing a few private negotiations to decide which technologies everyone else may use.
This is why I engage with companies and organisations that think seriously about sustainability, future rights scenarios and practical solutions.
Keep going servo.music, New Internet Media, ProofProfile and International Music Council’s Fair Music Platform.
As a composer, I welcome AI as a creative tool.
But copyright must protect creation.
It must not become a licence to prevent competition.