Under pressure
Sharing is caring or so they say but at the end of the month rent is due and the kids needs braces.
The fear of being exploited and the creeping sense of losing control over their own work is why people in the creative industries shudder at the idea of others using the fruits of their labour for free. It is also why there are non-profit organizations like BumaStemra in the Netherlands serving the interests of composers, songwriters and music publishers by managing copyrights, distributing licences, collecting fees and enforcing against infringements.

Their approach matches a business model primarily rooted in scarcity and exclusivity — meaning that access to creative works is deliberately limited and tightly controlled to maintain high perceived value. This is enforced through legal rights and contractual restrictions which help regulate how works are used and infringements pursued. Initiatives to change this model provoke a defensive, even hostile reaction from many within the creative industry.

This is why, when the UK government recently proposed exempting tech firms from copyright rules, allowing them to use music to train their AI models without seeking permission from the creators or paying them, alarm bells were ringing. The proposal by the Labour government came with an opt-out, where the copyright holder can signal they do not want their work to be used, but this did not prevent a ferocious backlash from the UK creative community.

It even had Sir Elton John wading into the debate, stating that he felt ‘incredibly betrayed’, calling the government ‘absolute losers, committing thievery on a high scale’ and describing Technology Secretary Peter Kyle as ‘a bit of a moron’ in an interview with the BBC. [1] Sir Elton’s concerns were backed by UK Music CEO Tom Kiehl, saying: ‘It appears the Government is on the brink of offering the UK’s world-leading music industry as a sacrificial lamb in its efforts to cosy up to American-based tech giants’. [2]

The reaction to the proposal is a perfect example of why people in the creative industries are reluctant to accept the notion of open source availability of their work. After all, image and desirability are cornerstones of industries like music, film and fashion, where they play a crucial role in how value is added and perceived. When creative works are a freely accessible commodity without any restrictions, they risk losing the prestige and desirability that make them valuable in the first place. Once the sense of scarcity is gone, consumers may hesitate to pay for content at all, or even lose interest altogether.

Years of decline
The music industry’s sharp decline began around the turn of the century, after a wildly profitable boom period with CD sales being especially lucrative. It cost next to nothing to produce a CD, which were then sold for approximately 10-15 USD, meaning labels were able to make margins of up to 100–200% on wholesale prices, with artists usually receiving only a small fraction of the profits. [3]
Not bad for a days work. But, when digital piracy and file-sharing platforms like Napster disrupted this comfortable model, global record sales plummeted by more than 50 % between 1999 and 2009. [4]

However, necessity is the mother of invention and solutions quickly emerged. A trend started that put more emphasis on live performances and interactions rather than churning out a record every couple of years. It re-focused on creativity and returned music to its roots: performing live for an audience—exactly what it has always been about since the beginning of time. This shows that technological advances should not be repressed but embraced in order to shape the future and reinvent tired, outdated business models.

In the case of the current triumphant ascent of AI, an additional concern is that it has become a political instrument. With governments and private companies looking for ways to integrate AI in their work processes in order to boost productivity and offset pressing worker shortages, politicians across the spectrum trumpet the merits of AI as a means to generate jobs and growth, promising ‘incredible change’ and ‘a transformation of the lives of working people’. [5] AI will supposedly fix the challenges that come with demographic decline and is marketed as a buffer against the erosion of traditional manufacturing by optimizing production processes and automating repetitive and undesirable tasks.

However, a significant portion of this apparent progress is built on the large-scale extraction of vast datasets from online content, including music, writing and artwork. This approach understandably breeds deep suspicion with those guarding their creative work from what they see is pirating, the pillaging of creativity by soulless AI-bots for profit. The aforementioned BumaStemra shares this vision. As a response however, they do not seek to challenge the traditional model of jealously guarding the rights to creative works. Instead, they are merely reacting, currently developing a pilot of recognizing AI-generated works. [6]

Napster
Remember Napster? The music filesharing monolith that pioneered digital frontiers evokes memories from an era when open-source culture was still largely confined to the realms of coders. The idea of boundless availability made the music industry tremble with fear but it emboldened romantics who saw a vision of the future where the Internet could serve as a crossroads of ideas and bring people closer together. After all, isn’t the whole point of technological progress to serve humanity?

Napster’s interpretation of this ideal was to dismantle the gatekeeping model of content distribution and make music universally accessible. Eventually they folded and morphed into a music streaming service in the mould of Spotify and Deezer, hiding music behind paywalls and intellectual property frameworks. And ironically, in the new digital era shaped by AI, the same issues of ownership, access, and creative freedom that Napster once challenged have resurfaced.

Perhaps it is wise to look at Napster and the early days of music sharing to find answers to embedding AI into creative processes. In the early 2000’s the panic among those in the creative industry concerning pirating music is comparable to the fears of today. But also back then there were artists that recognized and embraced emerging technologies.

Way back in 2000, American rock band The Offspring intended to publish their album Conspiracy of One online in its entirety, arguing that proper use of online possibilities can help promote and market its release. Singer Dexter Holland stated in 2000: ‘The reality is that this album is going to end up on the Internet whether we want it to or not, so we thought, ‘Why don’t we just do it ourselves?’ We’re not afraid of the Internet. We think it’s a very cool way to reach our fans’. [7] This novel approach was thwarted by concerns from their label Sony Music, who were embroiled in a lawsuit with Napster at the time, and the initiative eventually resulted in only one song being freely available to download.

Since those pioneering days, other possibilities have emerged for artists to connect with their fans without retracting into a defensive stance. Digital platforms enable direct and immediate interaction between artists and their fans. These platforms align supply and demand and serve as a public stage where artists can display their work and cultivate loyal followings.

Many creators, from musicians to travel vloggers, use channels like YouTube and TikTok to connect with their audiences, fuelling a cottage industry that promotes merchandise such as custom
T-shirts, mugs and other novelty items related to their personal brand. Services like Patreon have jumped on the bandwagon and provide creators with a possibility to showcase their material free of charge while generating income from fans who pay for access to exclusive content, voting privileges on upcoming projects and opportunities for direct engagement.

This approach connects with attitudes to sharing in the tech sector, where open-source availability is much more widespread than in the creative industry. Here successful startups generate revenue not by monetizing their core product, which is typically available for free, but almost exclusively through providing extra services to customers such as customized applications, self-management tools and training workshops. [8]

Who knows, maybe Sir Elton can take comfort in these examples when assessing the risks to creativity —and in the fact that after all the doom and gloom about pillaging and exploitation, people still adore music, curiosity and creativity are flowing and the music industry is still standing.