A(I)ddendum*

In Tuesday’s newsletter, I pledged to resist “a future where DRAKE licenses his voice, and gets royalties or the rights to songs from anyone who uses it.” I want a future, I wrote, where artists are free to use AI but AI is not free to use them.

But I also want a future, I might have added, that recognizes that controversial Drake channeler/copier GHOSTWRITER and others working in the same milieu are artists, too, potentially no different than, say, DANGER MOUSE, FRANK OCEAN, LED ZEPPELIN, GEORGE LUCAS or so many others who came before, repurposing, revising, reconsidering and recreating voices of their past, some figuratively, some literally, some transparently, some less so. Art and influence are sometimes wound tightly together at the start. Serious creative movements sometimes begin as jokes, or as offenses to acceptable tastes. This is going to be complicated. Even if you could stop the technology, which you can’t, you can’t stop pop, which ghostwriter’s “HEART ON MY SLEEVE,” whatever else you want to call it, most definitely is.

“There is more opportunity in exploring this technology than trying to shut it down,” musician and technologist HOLLY HERNDON tells the New York Times. “As an artist I am interested in what it means for someone to be me, with my permission, and maybe even be better at being me in different ways. The creative possibilities there are fascinating and will change art forever.”

The emphasis, she and others are suggesting, should be less on regulation and restriction and more on proper compensation. “We just have to figure out the terms and tech,” Herndon says. (And maybe also solve for who specifically those terms are benefiting, DAMON KRUKOWSKI writes in an essay that gives this debate yet another twist.)

Some might say we need to consider, as part of all this, how future ghostwriters themselves get paid. Because they, too, will be creating. And their work, too, will be downloaded, studied, remixed, reimagined and copied by future successors, human and robot alike.

(*There are probably more addenda to come.)

Dot Dot Dot

FRANK OCEAN pulls out of COACHELLA weekend two, after performing weekend one’s most scrutinized, debated, scientifically researched, post-mortemed set, the only one that warranted an insider account by two podcasting ex hockey players. BLINK-182 reportedly will step up to fill in Sunday’s headlining slot, all the stories about this being the first Coachella with no white headliners notwithstanding... “Music is music regardless of its age,” says CEO HARTWIG MASUCH of BMG, which believes it’s the first big music company to merge its new-release and catalog divisions. The quote is undeniably true. The news will be a little more interesting if another company whose product line isn’t quite so catalog-heavy decides to follow suit... Cassettes aren’t exactly flying off the shelves in England—total sales were less than 200,000 nationwide in 2022—but the number has gone up every year for the past decade, according to the BRITISH PHONOGRAPHIC INDUSTRY. “It’s something at a lower level than vinyl, but it is happening,” a BPI spokesperson says... HARRY STYLES, KID HARPOON, CLEO SOL and INFLO are the top nominees for the IVOR NOVELLO AWARDS, which honor songwriting in Britain and Ireland. The ceremony will be held May 18 in London... ADAM NEELY has some tips for musicians trying to fly with their instruments, including the underrated hide-it-behind-your-back-when-checking-in maneuver. He also has some well-earned frustration with “a bizarre legal purgatory where the law and airline policies do not reflect what’s going on in the cabin.”

Rest in Peace

K-pop singer MOONBIN, best known as one-fifth of the boy band Astro... IVAN “MAMÃO” CONTI, drummer for the Brazilian jazz-funk group Azymuth... Guitarist OTIS REDDING III, soul music heir who co-founded and co-led the family band the Reddings in the 1980s.