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November 18, 2025  

Infinite Licensing in Gen-AI Music Ecosystems will Create Fairer Music Value Calculations for Artists and Rightsholders

Dae Bogan excerpt from the webinar “The Permission Layer for AI Music: Consent, Attribution, and Getting Artists Paid” hosted by Abbi Press for The Double Helix on November 12, 2025

Infinite licensing (IL) will be the most effective and fair system of music rights licensing and remuneration in the gen-AI music era.

I believe we will see clear elements of it by 2030.

I appreciate Abbi Press’s perspective on the human element of music licensing. As a professional in the licensing space, she raises a number of important issues that would have to be acknowledged—then solved? ignored? or avoided?—for any compelling infinite licensing (IL) system to become widely adopted.

This is why I predict that we will not see a system close to my vision of IL until around 2030.

I believe that this is an important conversation, because at the core of it, the question is “Do current licensing frameworks benefit music creators?”

Even so-called ethically-sourced and ethically-trained AI music ecosystems do not fairly compensate the music creators whose music is contributing to gen-AI music.

IL will enable dynamic market-value calculations that smart contracts, opt-ins, royalty pools, and settlements cannot and have never fully captured.

Also watch:

Dae Bogan excerpt on the panel “Revolutionizing Rights Management for Artists“ at ASCAP Expo 2018
November 12, 2025  

Infinite Licensing in AI Music

Dae Bogan and Scott Cohen (then Chief Innovation Officer, Warner Music Group) presenting the lecture “Music 2020: The Next Era of Innovation in the Music Industry” at Music Biz Conference 2019

For a few years now, in private conversations with various technologists, music rightsholders and fellow data nerds, I’ve been using, and trying to coin, the term “infinite licensing” to describe the concept of real-time AI-powered dynamic licensing of rights in both generative-AI and single-source derivative AI music applications.

No, I am not talking about smart contracts, which are finite preset rules hardcoded in a file that is then minted to a blockchain, but rather the convergence of AI (conceptual/subjective/ecosystem) and blockchain (context/ownership) within the permission layer of applications that can generate an infinite ♾️ combination of licensing deal terms.

Infinite licensing would behave sort of like an oracle within applications to dynamically value and clear rights in machine-to-machine, business-to-business, and consumer-to-machine applications, going beyond the scope of human objectivity, individual experience in negotiation and valuation, and workload capacity in the licensing process.

It removes limiting royalty formulas and most favored nations models and replaces them with highly customized and more commercially accurate representations of value at a given point in time.

I imagine a future where an AI system built on an LLM that has learned from previous licensing deals (and the outcomes and missed opportunities of such deals), ingested airplay and streaming stats, interpreted correlations and trends, while calculating the lost value of undervalued deals, analyzed historical sync data, quantifies hype, ingested sales data, and consumer behavior and sentiment data, etc. would dynamically determine rates and terms for gen-AI and single-source derivative AI music outputs.

Infinite licensing, unlike smart contracts, could factor in variations in types of use, the real commercial value of the source music involved, the perceived cultural value of music creators involved, the market value of the opportunity, and much more.

The blockchain aspect, which has been in development across a variety of projects and startups for over 10 years now, would provide the architecture for transparent and immutable rights management while remuneration could be supported by cryptocurrency.

In 2019, when I presented my lecture “Music 2020: The Next Era of Innovation in the Music Industry” at the California Institute of The Arts and again at Music Biz Conference, I argued that artificial intelligence, blockchain, and cryptocurrency would be among the technologies that will transform the music industry in the 2020’s.

California Institute of the Arts

We’re halfway through the 2020’s and I think someone will figure out infinite licensing before 2030.

August 13, 2025  

On Preparing for an AI Future

“A child born today will never be smarted than artificial intelligence (AI).” – Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and ChatGPT

A child born today will grow up surrounded by AI powered experiences. In fact, by the time a child born today reaches adulthood, he will likely take the existence of AI for granted; as normal and expected. Take for example electricity and plumbing, vehicles and aircraft, medicine and psychiatry (as opposed to witchcraft). The age of enlightenment and the industrial revolution changed the human experience and human expectations.

Time morphed magnificent inventions and discoveries into basic necessities and human rights. AI, too, will make discoveries and change how we do things, but at a faster speed of technological evolution than humanity has ever experienced before. The rate of change in 10 years will be equivalent to the rate of change of 100 years in the past. This means that the learning curve will be sharp and people will be left behind.

By the time a middle school student today graduates college, half of college-educated white collar skilled jobs may be replaced by AI software and blue collar skilled jobs will be replaced or reduced by AI robots.

Music 2020: The Next Era of Innovation in the Music Industry

Knowledge will boast ego more than it creates a competitive advantage. That is, with all the world’s knowledge about any given topic accurately and immediately available and accessible to anyone at anytime, the need for subject matter experts in some fields will greatly decline. Objective fields such as finance, mathematics, history, language, some sciences, contract law, and others are susceptible to delution by AI replacement faster than subjective fields requiring human discernment, emotion, and context. Although, the creative class—a subjective field—is an exception.

So, the question is: How are you preparing your child for an AI future and how do today’s adults maintain relevance as the nature of work and human interaction evolves?

I attended a luncheon and networking event in Medellin yesterday with AI developers and entrepreneurs from around the world. What many employees may not know is that CEOs are already thinking about what aspects of their business can be made more efficient by AI. In other words, who can be replaced by AI.

In 2018, I made predictions on how the music industry would evolve in the 2020’s. Nearly every prediction that I made has come to fruition, including the rise of AI in the music industry.

Have you begun thinking about your industry?

IG: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJsZjuYyr5k/?igsh=MXJzbTB0MmJwYm0yZA==

May 20, 2025  

Are The People Who Are Creating AI Replacing Themselves With AI?

Me speaking at the hackathon at Music Biz 2025

Microsoft just laid off 6,000 employees, including hundreds of software engineers and their Director of Artificial Intelligence. Microsoft also recently announced it will be investing further into AI development, which to me does not translate into an investment in humans.

This got me thinking.

Last week, I mentored a hackathon in Atlanta. A hackathon is a fast-paced software development event where individuals and teams participate to build a web or mobile app to win a prize. Our company, among others, offered our API and data for use by the participants to build a web app based on music business use cases.

There were over 20 participants. Most of them were seasoned software developers, but a few had little to no experience.

Many of the participants engaged in vibe coding, which is a process by which AI writes the code, for the web app they submitted to be judged. They gave the AI prompts related to the use case that they were solutioning and the AI wrote the code.

There were three winners. The 2nd place winner were two individuals who are not software developers at all and cannot write code — a music business educator/lawyer and a product designer. They used AI to design a prototype based on the lawyer’s prompts surrounding sample licensing analysis.

The room was full of software developers, but many of them used AI to write most of the code to build their web apps. Effectively, AI built the apps.

Microsoft is laying off software developers to invest more into AI itself developing AI software to further improve AI development of AI software.

Are the people who are creating AI replacing themselves…with AI?

March 24, 2023  

Dae Bogan’s Music Industry Entrepreneurship Winter 2023 Class At UCLA Wraps With Student Startup Presentations

An artificial intelligence music production platform. A global music mentorship and collaboration social media platform. An app to track your favorite artist shows and connect to attend with other solo concert-goers. A digital music service for independent music where artists can engage with their listeners. And a marketplace where musical artists can find visual artists to design album artwork.

Those were the startup ideas that my students pitched during their final presentations tonight in my Music Industry Entrepreneurship class at UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.

They put in 10 weeks of market research and strategic business planning to conceptualize 5 highly feasible startup ideas while learning from my lectures and guest speakers including Jeff Ponchick (formerly of Repost by SoundCloud), Vickie Nauman (CrossBorderWorks), Shara Senderoff (Futureverse / Raised In Space), Josh Simons (Vampr), Darryl Reid (E-Mixed), and Kristin Graziani (Stem).

An intense 10-weeks series of 4-hour masterclasses (one per week) has come to an end. I am proud to know that another batch of tomorrow’s music industry game-changers are armed with the skillsets and entrepreneurial mindset to contribute to the continued evolution of the music industry.

One such example is my former student (2019) David Hartley, Founder & CEO of SoundSmith. David utilized my office hours to explore an idea at the intersection of music and influencers and express his interest in diving into entrepreneurship. After excelling in my music industry entrepreneurship class and graduating in 2020, he began to work on his idea with his friend/co-founder. Eventually, they were accepted into both the Startmate business accelerator and the Melbourne Accelerator Program. Recently, David was named a The Music Network 30 Under 30.

March 22, 2019  

Are Founders Of AI Music Services Being Disingenuous When They Tell Human Music Creators Not To Worry Or Are They Just Clueless?

ai music
Several founders of artificial intelligence (AI) music creation applications have stated that human music creators need not fear their AI programs, which can turn out a massive amount of computer-generated compositions every week.
 
These AI services have used, and continue to use, human-created compositions to improve upon the AI program’s ability to algorithmically create music compositions.
 
Recently, we’ve seen AVIA become the first AI to be recognized as a composer represented by the French performing rights society SACEM (I have bigger concern over the implication of recognizing AI as a composer and what that could mean to the legal definition of an author under copyright law) and Endel recently became the first AI to land a major label record deal with Warner Music Group.

If AVIA is a composer and Endel is a recording artist, and they can produce massive volumes of content (WMG is releasing 20 albums by Endel this year alone), what does this mean for the quality and pace of human-created music?

 
The founders might be telling human music creators not to worry, but until I see a portion of the royalties earned by AI platforms being distributed to the humans whose works are used as source material for the machine learning processes, I believe the statement at best demonstrates a cluelessness as to how industrialization works or at worse the statement is blatantly disingenuous.
October 16, 2018  

Here Are 10 Ways That The Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC) Can Set The Bar As A Collective Management Organization In The 21st Century

music licensing collective dae bogan

If you work in the music industry and own a radio, TV, smartphone, or computer then you’ve probably already heard that the The Orrin G. Hatch–Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act (MMA) has been signed into law. At this point, every major music rights organization has published their praise of the legislation, which will create a blanket streaming mechanical license for Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Google, Tidal, and other on-demand music streaming companies; bring pre-1972 sound recordings under federal copyright protection and open up a flow of royalties from digital services to the artists (or their estates) and copyright owners of those recordings; and codify an allocation of digital radio royalties to music producers.

Title 1 of the MMA, also called Music Modernization Act, sets out  provisions and guidance for the formation of a collective mechanical licensing body to be called the Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC). The MLC will administer a safe harbor blanket license for the streaming of musical works, collect licensee fees from licensees, prepare and remit statements of earnings to songwriters and music publishers, and make royalty payments to the same.

The MLC will join the ranks of SoundExchange, ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC in the sense that it will become a powerful representative of the collective rights of thousands of music creators and rights-holders in the United States. However, unlike its counterparts, The MLC will be born in the 21st century. And as a 21st century collective licensing organization, The MLC has the unique opportunity to implement, at inception, 21st century business practices utilizing 21st century best practices and technologies.

Here are 10 ways that the Mechanical Licensing Collective can set the bar as a 21st century collective licensing organization:
 
1.) Provide its members with a data BI (business intelligence) dashboard to better visualize their mechanical royalties data and dive deeper into their statements. The dashboard could enable forecasting based on projected streaming activity (maybe offer scenario planning, which makes it possible to attract loans against future royalties). They could ingest data from a service like BuzzAngle to offer estimated royalty accrual in real-time so that members who are artists can see the net effect of playlist streaming campaigns on their bottom line and choose to invest more into campaigns in virtual real-time.
 
2.) Maintain a public and accessible unclaimed royalties database. Deploy artificial intelligence to evaluate unmatched usage reports as opposed to relying solely on exact name and ISWC matches. And expand the statute of limitations on unclaimed royalties to 10 years
 
3.) Require DSPs who take advantage of the safe harbor streaming mechanical license to recommend (and provide guidance) to aggregators and labels to provide composition ownership information in their metadata when uploading releases to the DSP. This can be done with custom parameters in DDEX ERN or via the new DDEX MWN (Musical Works Ownership) message schema.
 
4.) Work with the U.S. Copyright Office to create an integrated musical works registrations process so that works are simultaneously registered with the MLC and LOC.
 
5.) Expand the statute of limitation period on unclaimed royalties to 10 years and hold funds in an interest-bearing escrow account from which 25% of the interest flows to the general fund of the MLC and 75% of the interest is paid to the payee, along with the balance of unpaid royalties, once the payee has come forward or have been found.
 
6.) Commission an annual audit and publish the findings to members.
 
7.) Use blockchain, where applicable.
 
8.) Remit statements and payments monthly when a member opts to receive direct deposits and electronic statements.
 
9.) Display assessed administration fees on royalty statements.
 
10.) Do not implement high usage weights or bonuses.
October 12, 2018  

Music 2020: The Next Era of Innovation in the Music Industry

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Wednesday night, at California State University – Northridge (CSUN), I conducted my latest workshop, “Music 2020: The Next Era of Innovation in the Music Industry,” in Professor Andrew L. Surmani’s class for his M.A., Music Industry Administration students.

In this workshop, we explore the art and process of ideation; discuss the differences between invention, disruption, and innovation; and profile a number of developing innovations within the music industry including augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR), artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), blockchain and crypotcurrency. The presentation ends with a design thinking exercise where students break out into groups to work through the fundamental design thinking process of developing a minimum viable product to solve a vetted problem in the music industry.

The students seemed to like the workshop:

Dae, you were fantastic and the CSUN MIA students thoroughly enjoyed your very organized, insightful and forward thinking presentation. That was evident in the line of students waiting to talk to you at the break. Thank you again for coming to talk to our graduate music industry students.

– Andrew Surmani, Associate Professor of Music Industry Studies, California State University – Northridge


I’m looking forward to conducting this workshop next week at the College of the Canyons.