Economics

Everyone Loves Economics Podcast Series Episode 1: Who Owns Your Voice Transcript

Hamm: Hi everyone, and welcome to "Everyone Loves Economics" and this episode, "Who owns my voice?" I’m your host, Melina Hamm, a student here at Tennessee Tech, and this podcast is part of a series of episodes created by Tennessee Tech Honors students. This episode is going to look at some questions that have arisen since AI has become a frequently used tool in our modern world, as well as in the music industry. All of which ultimately leads to the big question: Who owns my voice?

The Beatles’ Grammy-winning song, “Now and Then” was produced with the help of AI technology. Everyone is aware that we are living in a world where AI is becoming increasingly relevant and more and more fields are being overtaken by the artificial works of AI. And the fine arts, like music and art, are no exception here. The music industry, especially, finds itself at a crucial turning point where AI is either making a revolutionary difference or threatening to dominate the industry.

AI is already able to produce new music and help speed up recording processes through the access of online databases (Ovsiienko, n.d.). The best example of this is the last Beatles song “Now and Then,” which was published in November 2023 (Semancik, 2025). The track made use of AI in the production process and won the first-ever Grammy for a record produced with the help of AI. All of this sounds great so far; however, because of this rapid evolution, the legal ground is nowhere near being clearly established. In the specific case of vocal recordings, AI can replicate the voices of famous artists by using different mechanisms to write and publish new music. As an example, in 2023, TikTok user Ghostwriter977 was able to produce the song “Heart on the Sleeve” featuring the voice of The Weekend and Drake (Semancik, 2025). With the help of AI, the vocal recordings replicated the unique sound of the popular artists’ voices.

This caused a lot of questions to arise: Can this be legally justified? Who owns the music and the rights to publish it? And, do we still own our voice? Most of these AI-generated projects are created without the consent of the owner of the voice, which allegedly violates the copyrights of millions of singers and artists whose music is being sampled. Current copyright regulations do not cover most of these questions, leaving artists and producers unprotected and potentially unemployed in the future.

So, do we still own our own voice? And how can artists' copyrights be protected while AI-generated music is making use of their voices? Looking at some recent data and studies that have been published regarding the issue, it becomes obvious that AI-generated music and copyright regulations are turning into a pressing matter. For example, a study conducted by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers in 2024 predicts a 25% decline in income for the music industry because of AI (CISAC, 2024). Another study by the French and German music societies “Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music” (SACEM) and “Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrecht” (GEMA) supports the urgency of the matter as it reports that over 70% of musicians are concerned with the developments and the implementation of AI into the industry (GEMA, 2024). However, the same study also 5 showed that 35% of those surveyed are already incorporating AI in various aspects of their music production (GEMA, 2024).

So, it is obvious that AI is already a big part of the industry and is creating changes that cannot be undone. Therefore, the question now should be how to deal with the consequences and how to make sure that AI is not going to damage the industry but actually help to improve it instead.

To answer some of these questions, I am joined today by Dr. Sean Alley, who is a professor here at Tennessee Tech. Thank you for joining me, Dr. Alley. Before we start, maybe you could just introduce yourself.

Alley: I am Sean Alley. I am an economist. I am the Department Chair in Economics, Finance, and Marketing at Tech. I have a PhD in Economics, and I went to law school after that. So I have some interest in both of those fields, in Law and Economics.

Hamm: Alright, so the first question I have is: Who should own the copyright to AI-generated songs?

Alley: Well, who should own it? Probably depends on where you stand on those issues depends on where you sit. If you are an artist, I am sure you think you. It is my understanding that the way we currently do it, and this sounds about right to me, is that if it is entirely AI-generated, it is in the public domain, and no one owns it. So, anyone can use it if it is entirely AI-generated. If it was done by a human with some help from AI, then the person owns it.

Hamm: So, it seems that the problem we are facing right now is that AI is incapable of producing songs, and those songs have already been published, but there is still this gray area when it comes to the legal rights. So, could we say that right now no one really owns the right to these songs?

Alley: Well, this is an issue that often occurs when social institutions evolve. Our legal institutions are not ready for it, so the law takes a while. In the United States, this is done. The law develops when there are lawsuits, and there aren’t any lawsuits until after there is a problem. And so, when you have something new like AI that may upend an industry, certainly it is going to cause some transition in the music industry, which they have dealt with a lot during my lifetime. You know, the music industry has had to reorganize itself many times, and this is probably going to be one of those times. But you are right. If we have purely AI-generated things, the way the law is currently, then no one owns them.

Hamm: So, what you are saying is that we basically need these lawsuits right now to draw more attention to the issue, so that in the future we will have clearer regulations regarding the copyright issues.

Alley: Definitely. Yes. That is sort of the way the common law works here is that, like when there is a particular dispute, the court will decide that dispute, and then that is the law going forward. And so a lot of times the actual details of how exactly these things work out – so the way Law and Economics scholars consider the law is that the law is out there and we all understand what the law is and when there are disputes, then that causes us socially to discover what the law is and write it down so everybody knows what to do going forward. So, yeah, these lawsuits will be a big issue.

Hamm: So, what do you think needs to change in the future so we can ensure that artists own the property rights to their own songs, and that there are still going to be incentives for them to produce original works?

Alley: I don’t know. We will have to see how it develops. I am not sure that there is anything wrong with the way it is. So, if you were involved and you used AI’s help, then I think it should belong to you. If AI did it all by itself, then maybe it shouldn’t belong to anyone. But, that being said, there are things that AIs wouldn’t be allowed to do just like you wouldn’t be allowed to do it. So, if I recorded a song that no one would ever want to hear, but if I recorded a song of me singing and published it, so it is written down in a fixed thing that is copyrightable. My voice is not copyrightable, but the recorded thing is copyrightable. So, you’re not allowed to just go grab that and tell AI to make another song out of it because I have a property interest in that recording. Your voice is not copyrightable because for it to be copyrightable, it has to be a fixed thing. But the law deals with stuff like that in other ways. It is not intellectual property so much as it is intellectual property-related. Like, in the United States, we have had a lot of issues in this area with athletes being used in video games and stuff. It is the same kind of thing. So, there are non-copyright legal protections for your name, image, and likeness, and those would cover you being able to just have AI mimic my voice, which would get you in trouble with that part of the law.

Hamm: Alright. Thank you so much for joining me today, Dr. Alley, and for the interesting insight on the topic.

So, as Dr. Alley was saying, the current situation is going to bring changes to the music industry. The fact that there are lawsuits and artists being scared for their future is going to put more urgency on the matter. AI has developed faster than the legal framework, but it is time for these laws to catch up. I would claim that the whole situation is going to get to a point where having clearly established copyright laws is going to be necessary to incentivize creativity by giving creators ownership over their work. Because if AI-generated music is not accredited to a human creator, it could undermine these incentives, as there would be less control and potential financial rewards. If AI companies or developers own the rights to every AI-generated music, this could centralize ownership in the hands of large corporations, possibly taking out any competition from smaller creators or independent artists. However, attributing copyright to the creators of the AI might also incentivize innovation and creativity. As mentioned earlier, there are several possible solutions, all of which involve more clarity regarding the legal groundworks, whatever they might look like.

Thank you so much for tuning in and listening! Make sure to listen to the other episodes of “Everyone loves Economics” as well, and don’t forget to listen to some good music today!

References

Berger, V. (2025, January 3). AI’s impact on music in 2025: Licensing, creativity and industry survival. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/virginieberger/2024/12/30/ais-impact-on-musicin-2025-licensing-creativity-and-industry-survival/

Carrero, E. (2024, July 16). Voice Deepfake: Is it possible to detect a fake voice? Mobbeel. https://www.mobbeel.com/en/blog/voice-deepfake/

GEMA. (2024, January 30). Study: AI and music. https://www.gema.de/en/news/ai-study

Ijiga, O. M., Idoko, I. P., Enyejo, L. A., Akoh, O., Ugbane, S. I., & Ibokette, A. I. (2024, February 28). Harmonizing the voices of AI: Exploring generative music models, voice cloning, and voice transfer for creative expression. World Journal of Advanced Engineering Technology and Sciences. https://doi.org/10.30574/wjaets.2024.11.1.0072

International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC). (2024, December 2). Global economic study shows human creators’ future at risk from generative AI. https://www.cisac.org/Newsroom/news-releases/global-economic-study-shows-human-creators-future-risk-generative-ai

Ovsiienko, V. (n.d.). Unleash the power of AI-generated voices in music production. Voice Cloning Software for Content Creators. https://www.respeecher.com/blog/ai-generated-voices-music-production#:~:text=AI%20voices%20can%20significantly%20reduce,speeding%20up%%2020the%20production%20cycle

Pujari, V., & Wilson, B. (2023, December). Copyright and authorship in AI-generated music. Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research. https://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2312540.pdf

Semancik. (2025, February 4). How AI is transforming the creative economy and music industry. OHIO Today. https://www.ohio.edu/news/2024/04/how-ai-transforming-creative-economymusic-industry  

Sturm, B. L. T., Iglesias, M., Ben-Tal, O., Miron, M., & Gómez, E. (2019, September 6). Artificial Intelligence and music: Open questions of copyright law and engineering praxis. MDPI. https://doi.org/10.3390/arts8030115