Came across this and it feels like a line just got crossed. It’s actually a reggae song called “Angels Above Me” by Stick Figure. Only noticed because they happen to be my favorite band that I follow closely over in r/calireggae. I can only imagine how the artist feels.
TL;DR: An AI-generated version of that song popped up on TikTok. Same lyrics, same melody, basically the same song. Just a different voice and production. It got renamed, started spreading, and now it’s everywhere. Millions of views, tons of reposts, and it’s already made its way onto Spotify and YouTube. Here’s the article I am talking about: https://thomascussins.substack.com/p/ai-stole-my-clients-song-then-its
From what I can tell, the original artist isn’t credited anywhere and isn’t seeing any of the money.
It doesn’t even feel like a remix or a cover. It feels more like a clone. And with how streaming payouts already work, everything gets pooled together, this kind of thing just eats into what real artists make even more.
I’ve seen some ideas like requiring AI songs to disclose source material and route revenue back to the original creators, which seems reasonable in theory, but hard to enforce.
Curious where people land on this. Is this just the next version of remix culture, or does this cross into something totally different?