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Production Libraries Are Licensing to AI Companies. Could It Threaten Their Whole Business?

The $1 billion production music business has begun licensing its works to AI companies. Could it spell the end of the business as a whole?

Around the time that ChatGPT was first released to the public, Alex Bestall, CEO of Rightsify, a music production library, discovered that he was sitting on a new, lucrative business opportunity. “I think this is short-term money for a long-term loss,” says Henry Phipps, an emerging film composer who previously held a full-time job writing songs for a production library. As he sees it, AI music could augment, but not entirely replace, the compositions of blockbuster film scorers — but it might “cut off the bottom rungs of the ladder” by decreasing opportunities for young upstarts like him.

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