Music Metadata Minefield: prior initiatives, interoperability and how to let GenAI’s copyright traces transpire

This paper shows that music industry and EU initiatives at the start of the online era for music consumption between the early 2000s and the early 2010s, aiming for centralized copyright databases, failed in part due to misaligned remuneration systems and economic priorities. Some challenges present since those early years have remained, while new ones have emerged with the advent of music streaming, and more recently also with generative AI (GenAI) music tools and services. Decentralized solutions also still have to grapple with metadata design challenges for attaining music metadata interoperability, generally with regard to domain specificity, granularity and provenance. The transparency obligations in Articles 50 and 53(1)(d) of the AI Act do not provide sufficient practical, enforceable rules that can improve metadata interoperability or copyright attribution for GenAI music in the (European) music industry. The explanations and guidance given in the First Draft Code of Practice in relation to Article 50 or the Explanatory Notice and Template for Article 53 do not sufficiently fill those gaps either.