The Co-Write Room: Taylor Swift, AI and Trademark Law

No Brakes on No Fakes

The NO FAKES Act cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. Unanimous voice vote, on its third attempt, the first time it's made it out of committee. It now heads to a full Senate floor vote. Before you file this under "celebrity protection bill," stop. That's not what this is. Right now, there is no federal law protecting your voice. Not for the session vocalist in East Nashville. Not for the Tejano singer in San Antonio. Not for the Indian classical musician whose recordings are sparse and whose estate is informal. Any of them can have their voice cloned, packaged, and monetized with no uniform federal cause of action to stop it. The NO FAKES Act changes that. In this episode: What the bill actually creates: a federal property right over voice and likeness, for every American. For the first time! The enforcement number that matters: $750,000 per work for platforms that fail to comply with notice and takedown. Tthe figure that forces Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, and AI tool companies to build real infrastructure instead of playing whack-a-mole. The 70-year post-mortem right most outlets aren't covering, and why it's a cultural preservation question, not a technicality. What happens next? Full Senate vote, then the House, then a signature — and why the RIAA's "later this year" timeline reads as cautiously real.  Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee as lead sponsor, and why Music Row has been the loudest constituency pushing this forward The political will exists right now in a way it simply didn't in 2024 or 2025. That can change quickly in either direction. If you're a session musician, independent artist, or estate representative without a federal cause of action today, this bill is the first one that closes that gap. Follow its progress. I'm Raia. This is The Co-Write Room. Daily at the intersection of AI, music, and the business reshaping both. Follow and rate the show wherever you listen. * (00:00) - Cold Open * (00:20) - Committee Clears * (00:45) - Who This Protects * (01:20) - The Federal Property Right * (01:45) - $750K Per Work * (02:10) - The 70-Year Right * (02:35) - What's Next?

Ain't Nothing The Real Thing

What if the song that went viral last week was purchased? And what if the royalties you didn't earn from it were stolen on top of that? In Episode 9, Raia Kumar tracks four stories — manufactured virality, the first federal AI streaming fraud conviction, a billion-dollar funding round mid-lawsuit, and a landmark bill that could finally give independent songwriters a legal seat at the table. In this episode: * Labels are paying regular people around forty dollars per one hundred views to create short-form videos using specific tracks — manufacturing what the algorithm reads as organic momentum. Trevor Noah said it out loud. The industry has known for years. * Michael Smith, 54, of North Carolina pleaded guilty on March 19, 2026 to using AI to generate hundreds of thousands of songs and bots to fake billions of streams — collecting over ten million dollars in royalties that belonged to working musicians. He is the first person in American history convicted of a federal crime for AI-assisted music streaming fraud. The key legal distinction: the crime wasn't AI music. The crime was manufacturing the audience. * Suno closed a four hundred million dollar funding round this week — valuation five point four billion dollars, more than double seven months ago — while actively being sued by major labels for copyright infringement. Their new AI model is "built in partnership with the music industry," which turns out to mean a deal with Warner Music Group. One major label. Not independent songwriters. * Within 72 hours of each other, Suno and Udio filed nearly identical motions to seal the same piece of information in their separate federal cases: the total number of audio files each company used to train their AI. The argument is trade secret protection. The effect, if granted, is that the most important number in determining the scope of copyright damages may be permanently hidden. * On June 1, the Artists Rights Alliance launched a national campaign behind the Protect Working Musicians Act, reintroduced by Representative Deborah Ross of North Carolina. The bill would give independent musicians an antitrust exemption — the legal right to collectively negotiate with AI companies and streaming platforms. That right does not currently exist. * What is your organization's position on the Protect Working Musicians Act, and are you in contact with Representative Ross's office? 0:00 | Cold Open | The purchased song. The stolen royalties. The thesis. 0:30 | Welcome | Raia opens the episode. June 4. Four stories, one thread. 0:50 | Story 1: Labels Buy Virality | Trevor Noah's clip. Labels paying ~$40/100 views for short-form videos. What that means for independent artists competing against marketing spend. 2:15 | Story 2: The First Conviction | Michael Smith guilty plea. AI-generated songs + streaming bots. $10M stolen. The legal distinction that defines what comes next. 3:45 | Story 3: The Money & the Cover | Suno's $400M raise at $5.4B. The Warner Music Group deal. Suno and Udio's near-identical motions to seal training data volume in federal court. 5:15 | Story 4: The Response | Artists Rights Alliance launches Protect Working Musicians Act campaign. Rep. Deborah Ross. What the bill does. The CTA for independent artists. 6:15 | Closing | The frameworks being built now are being built without independent creators at the table. * (00:00) - Cold Open * (00:30) - Welcome * (00:50) - Labels Buy Virality * (02:15) - The First Conviction * (03:45) - The Money & the Cover * (05:15) - The Response * (06:15) - Closing

Newsflash - Take It Down!

The TAKE IT DOWN Act is now law. Which means platform enforcement rules are in effect — and there are two things buried in the fine print that matter far more than the headline. In this Newsflash, Raia breaks down: * What the law actually requires covered platforms to do — and the 48-hour federal deadline that is now non-negotiable * Why known identical copies must also be removed, closing a loophole bad actors have exploited for years * The legal distinction that changes everything: consent to create does not equal consent to distribute * What this law does not do — and why the burden of discovery still falls on you For musicians creators, AI voice cloning and visual likeness tools have made it trivially easy to generate convincing content featuring real artists — posted without permission, without compensation, and until now, without any clear path to removal. That just changed. You should know where to find each platform's reporting tool. The 48-hour clock doesn't start until you trigger it. The Co-Write Room is an AI-powered podcast covering the intersection of artificial intelligence, music, and creative rights. * (00:00) - Cold Open * (00:28) - The 48-Hour Rule * (00:58) - Detail #1: The Copies Loophole Is Closed * (01:28) - Detail #2: Consent to Create ≠ Consent to Distribute * (02:10) - What Actually Changed * (02:48) - What This Law Doesn't Do * (03:05) - Outro

Proof: The Holy Grail of AI Detection

A new study proved that labeling music as AI, even when it's human-made, causes listeners to emotionally disconnect. The label changed. The music didn't.  This week, Raia covers the infrastructure being built to apply those labels:  * The Suno lawsuit expanding to 61,000 recordings * Apple Music's AI model fingerprinting * Quicksilver browser extension * Protect Working Musicians Act * Johnny Cash's estate suing Coca-Cola under Tennessee's ELVIS Act * YouTube's automatic AI detection rollout.  The infrastructure of proof is being built right now. So is the infrastructure of protection. They are not moving at the same speed. And they are not being built for the same people. In this episode: The Suno lawsuit expansion: two weeks of Audible Magic audio fingerprinting surfaced 61,026 recordings and the labels called it a small fraction of total infringement. What the technology just proved is possible in federal court. What Universal and Sony won't tell you: they're fighting for master recordings, not the underlying compositions many of which belong to independent Nashville publishers and songwriters with no seat in that Massachusetts courtroom Apple Music's internal count: one third of all submissions are now AI-generated. Less than 0.05% of listening time goes to those tracks but in a pro-rata royalty pool, AI tracks don't need listeners to do damage. They just need to exist. Apple's proprietary technology that can identify not just whether a track is AI-generated, but which AI model produced it and what that means for mandatory disclosure at the distribution level Quicksilver: the browser extension from the University of Chicago team behind Glaze and Nightshade. Press Analyze while a song streams. It scans for inaudible AI audio artifacts on your device. Nothing uploaded. And the research behind it puts nearly 50% of weekly new music releases as AI-generated The Protect Working Musicians Act, reintroduced May 21st by Rep. Deborah Ross with Tennessee's Rep. Steve Cohen as co-sponsor. Why the antitrust exemption framing matters and why naming AI developers as negotiating counterparties is a significant shift Nashville: the Johnny Cash estate suing Coca-Cola in federal court under the ELVIS Act. Why Coca-Cola's soundalike defense, if it succeeds, becomes a roadmap for AI voice replication.  YouTube's automatic AI content detection rollout and the gap between who gets likeness protection (signed artists at CAA, UTA, WME, major management) and who gets caught by the enforcement system (everyone) Look up the Protect Working Musicians Act. Find your representative and contact them. The Artist Rights Alliance has a one-click contact tool at artistrightsalliance.org Use it! If you've been incorrectly flagged by an AI detection system on YouTube, Spotify, anywhere - Raia wants to hear from you.  DM the show or email. That episode is being built now, and it needs real names and real examples I'm Raia. This is The Co-Write Room a show about AI, music, and the business reshaping both.  Follow and rate the show wherever you listen.

YouTube: One Button Dis - No Loyalty, No Royalty

YouTube built a button that replaces your music with AI — automatically, inside a copyright claim, at zero cost to whoever just displaced you. There is no opt-out for rights holders. The displacement is structural, and it is baked into the interface. This week Raia connects three developments that look separate but aren't: a platform feature that quietly routes around human composers, a French legislative bill that could flip the entire burden of proof in AI copyright cases, and a viral AI song that borrowed a real artist's creative DNA — and sent the traffic, attention, and royalties somewhere else. In this episode: * YouTube's "Create" tool inside Studio's Replace Song feature — what it does, who it targets, and why calling it a feature update obscures what it actually is: a policy decision about whose music is worth paying for * The French Darcos bill — passed unanimously by the Senate — which inserts a rebuttable presumption into IP law, shifting the burden of proof onto AI companies to demonstrate they didn't use copyrighted works in training * The coalition of 81 French cultural organizations led by SACEM, and why a legal precedent in France could hand Nashville's songwriting community its first working legislative roadmap * Stick Figure's "Angels Above Me," the AI cover "Run Run River," and how a copied song can hit number two on the global Shazam chart before the original artist even knows it exists * Why the question is no longer whether this is happening — it's whether anyone moves before the damage becomes the new normal Before you close this app: * If you have music in YouTube videos subject to Content ID claims, understand that the new default is AI replacement — not human resolution. Know your options before you're in the middle of a claim. * If you're a songwriter or publisher following AI legislation, the Darcos bill is the model to watch. It's the clearest framework on the table right now. * If you know an independent artist who needs to hear this today — send it to them. The platforms are not going to surface this story for you. The Co-Write Room is at the intersection of AI, music, and the business reshaping both. Follow and rate the show wherever you listen. * (00:00) - Cold Open * (00:55) - How the Tool Works * (02:00) - The Structural Problem * (02:50) - France Flips the Burden * (04:10) - SACEM & the 81 * (05:05) - Run Run River * (06:10) - Action Steps + Outro