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We will be publishing again shortly, having been on hiatus to deal with some personal matters. But please enjoy this important Trapital discussion between Dan Runcie & our founder Bill Werde about the implication for the music business of Penske media, and its ownership of virtually all entertainment trade/business media. And we will be back to posting again soon!

I fully expected this essay to underscore how clearly generative tech platforms are ripping off copyrighted music. But if you, like me, go through this piece and listen to all of the samples that the author uses as evidence of copyright infringement, I actually think this piece becomes an incredibly compelling—and terrifying—argument for exactly how difficult the case will be for copyright holders. If these examples are the best that someone TRYING to prove violations can come up with, well, that’s just scary. Almost none of these feel like slam dunks when it comes to infringement. Can you hear the clear influences? Are some of them incredibly close? Absolutely. And certainly, some of the lyrical reproduction does feel like copyright infringement. But when it comes to the music and the recordings that were generated, if I want to be as generous as possible to the hopes of major labels and existing rights holders, I would say that it still seems pretty clear that these generative platforms can make a strong case that their work is transformative, and not derivative. Between that reality, and the general quality of the songs that this next generation of tech is producing, it is legitimately chilling.