Your Fav Radio DJ Might Not Be Human!

Good news is radio listenership is reported to be good...but who are we listening to? For 6 months, listeners to a radio station had no idea that the DJ they were listening to, wasn't human. AI DJs are already popping up on the radio across the planet, replacing humans or serving as live sidekick/cohosts. "If a robot can blend in for half a year without anyone noticing, it might already be happening more than we think."

Podcast Video : https://youtu.be/EXTlSzfsaSY

For those who want to know about the significance of masters in the recording industry, here's a little dive into the background and history of artists, record labels, and the fight for masters ownership.

In what has been described as a brilliant strategy, Taylor Swift devalues her first 6 albums by rerecording them and then, as the songwriter, denied anybody licensing the originals in movies or commercials insisting they could only use her re-recorded versions; meanwhile sales of the originals dropped around 60%. To the point that the owners sold her the original masters of her 1st 6 albums, and more, for $360 million, close to what they paid for them. To the delight of the T-Swifties, she now owns it all (and makes all the $). Swift wasn't the first to re-record or buy the masters to gain total control of her music.

But now the labels are worried about being 'Swifted' as more legacy artists follow her lead. The value of a record label is determined by its ownership of, and profiting from, master recordings. How can record labels survive if their golden eggs, the legacy recordings they own, are effectively neutered by re-recordings?

Sources are linked on my blog: https://snydersmusicbiznews.blogspot....

The Adele / Guinea Pig Experiment

https://youtu.be/1Cjo8p8pe8U

AI version of Jonesy the cat introduces and ends the podcast

Jonesy's Cat-Shit Crazy Music-Biz News, is that scientists exposed 2 groups of Guinea Pigs to Adele's 'I Miss You' for 7 days. The purpose to see how compression/loudness affects hearing. One group recovered in 1 day. The other group of Guinea Pigs now have long-term hearing damage and should probably seek legal advice! While both had hearing damage, one group recovered in 1 day. The other group of Guinea Pigs now have long-term hearing damage and should probably seek legal advice! The point being that heavily compressed music not only affects the listener's enjoyment, it also affects long-term hearing. So the message being for engineers to stop over-compressing audio just to make it louder.

Note: I had fun with AI, but the message about loudness and its affect on hearing is serious.

Sources at https://snydersmusicbiznews.blogspot.com/2025/05/guinea-pigs-forced-to-listen-to-adele.html

"It's about legacy, justice and the future of artist ownership."

Salt and Pepa are suing Universal Music Group for the rights to the recordings of their hit songs.

UMG is Pushing Back by taking down their music from streams.

Copyright law does allow artists to reclaim ownership of their recordings after 35 years, but UMG says they were employees and so the songs are work-for-hire and they don't want to give them up.

A good look into the battle for ownership of artist's recordings, especially as music catalogs are selling for millions of dollars.

Can Great Music Rise Above the Slop? [WARNING: May Be Depressing For Musicians]

The Dead Internet Theory: "AI-generated material will eventually flood the internet so thoroughly, that nothing human can be found. "

The ocean of music is filling with AI slop. Major artists flood the streams with tons of remixes, altered versions, and clips of the same song/album.

New artists try to get attention by posting 100s of Tik-Tok videos of the same song hoping just one will go viral. With 'Oversaturation', 'Content-Oversuppy', and focus on old music instead of new music, does new music stand a chance, or are we in the 'Worst-ever Era of American Pop Culture' ?

Will AI Finally Be Able To Scuttle That Pesky Copyright Thing?

(Update: There is an article today on The Verge entitled "Elon Musk’s Apparent Power Play at the Copyright Office Completely Backfired: Ripping off content to train AI wasn't going to fly with either MAGA populists or MAGA media". So while there is absolutely still no reason given to fire the director who is most qualified to guide the Copyright Office on matters of AI, the end result is up in the air, and I remain skeptical, as given in the example of Meta that just gobbled up millions of books for AI, without permission from the authors or publishers.)

Why was the Director of the Copyright Office suddenly fired? Was it because AI companies didn't like what was in the preliminary Copyright Office report on AI and Fair Use? That they want creators' works and compositions, ignoring the recommendation of the report (and the Constitution), to be free to feed their AI models?

"If tech companies can pillage and plunder people’s creative work so they can make money for themselves and their friends, then it will destroy whole creative industries,” (Reid Southen, concept artist and illustrator)

Once that door is flung open for AI to gobble up all human creativity without a care about the human creators, there is no putting it all back.

Revivification. The groundbreaking tech that will shape the future of music production! An Art Gallery in Australia is featuring NEW music being composed years after the passing of the composer, Alvin Lucier, with a process known as revivification. "“One of the concepts we are exploring is whether an artist could continue to create work after they have passed away.” Stem cells developed from Lucier's blood cells at Harvard, became living organoids / 'mini-brains' located in and used to create new music in the art gallery.

"The more [artists] that stick their head in the sand, the more likely it's gonna go to the people who are doing it for profit and won't be thinking about them." Heap

"Actors can make good money licensing their images to AI companies, but many are later shocked to see where their digital clones turn up".

As artists like Grimes allows use of her AI voice, and Imogen Heap allows the use of "...the vibe, feel, rhythmic style, instrument textures" of her music, do they really know how their AI versions may end up? Actors who sell their likeness and even emotions for AI training, are shocked how it all is used, and have no recourse. Even now, most musicians don't realize the music distributor they may use allows AI to remix, mashup, and more, their music on Spotify and elsewhere (read the contract!). Heap makes clear that corporations are going to use AI regardless of what musicians think. Even the Academy that once viewed AI as the enemy, now allows films to win Oscars.