Who decides whether AI learns from your catalog?

Every new machine for playing recorded work has raised the same question: who gets paid when it plays? The phonograph raised it, then radio, then the jukebox, the VCR and streaming. Generative AI raises it again, with a twist. This machine doesn’t play the work. It learns from it.

The question is already being answered for you

AI models learn from very large collections of recordings, images, film and text. Some of that material was licensed. Much of it was gathered from wherever copies happened to be reachable. Courts and lawmakers in several countries are still working out what the law allows, and the answers differ from one country to the next.

Waiting for that to settle is a choice too. While it settles, the decision about your catalog is being made by whoever holds a copy of it.

Three positions an owner can take

Say nothing. Your work may be used anyway, learned from copies on platforms, fan sites and old promotional uploads. You won’t be asked, and you won’t be paid.

Opt out. Some AI companies, and some laws such as the European Union’s rules on text and data mining, give owners a way to reserve their rights. An opt-out only works when you can say exactly what is yours and where it lives.

License. A market for licensed training material is forming, and buyers increasingly want to know that what they bought is clean. A license lets you set the scope, the price, the term and the uses you won’t allow.

Each of these depends on the same thing: knowing, precisely, what your catalog contains and what you hold the rights to.

What a catalog needs before it can say yes, or no

1. An inventory. Every master, outtake, photograph, film reel and document, in one place, with no “probably in the garage.”
2. Rights resolved item by item. Who owns the recording, the composition, the photograph, the likeness. Co-writers, samples, session players and photographers all count.
3. Metadata a contract can point to. A license has to name what it covers. “The 1970s live recordings” is not a list; a set of identified files is.
4. Access that matches the deal. The licensee should receive exactly what was licensed, in the agreed format, for the agreed period, and nothing else.
5. A record of use. What was delivered, to whom and when, so you can audit the deal, renew it or end it.
6. A price you set. Licensing on your terms means the terms start with you, not with the buyer’s standard form.

Saying no, and making it stick

A refusal is only as strong as your knowledge of what you own and where it is.

An archive spread across hard drives, old hosting accounts and a label’s servers can’t enforce much, because no one can say what is in it. An organized, rights-resolved catalog with access control can say yes on its own terms, and it can say no and prove it.

Where Starchive fits

Starchive builds and runs archives for artists, estates and rights holders: ingest, metadata, rights, access control and delivery, in one platform the owner controls. Permissions travel with every file and every action is recorded, so a license can be enforced and a refusal can be shown to hold.

This post is general information, not legal advice. Talk to your lawyer about your own catalog and contracts.