When a major label licenses its catalog to an AI company, someone gets paid. According to the American Federation of Musicians, it isn’t the people who played on the records. This week the union, which represents more than 80,000 professional musicians in the US, launched “Human Made, Human Paid”, a campaign that says labels are collecting “massive corporate payouts” from AI licensing while “paying musicians zero.” The campaign was reported by CMU and announced in an official AFM statement.
Three Demands, Zero Room for Interpretation
In the words of AFM International President Tino Gagliardi, “Human Made, Human Paid is about consent, credit, and compensation.” The campaign calls for musician consent, credit and compensation whenever human art is used to develop AI. It sets out three requirements it describes as non-negotiable:
- Consent: musicians must have the explicit right to permit or refuse the use of their work for AI training.
- Credit: performers must be fully and transparently credited.
- Compensation: musicians must receive fair payment whenever their work generates value in AI systems or licensing deals.
The union also wants contractual safeguards to stop labels from using AI to undercut musicians, replace human labour or exploit recorded tracks. Gagliardi is direct about the labels’ profits: they “cannot pocket profits built on the backs of human artistry.” But the campaign is careful about its scope. “This initiative is not a fight against new technology or creative tools,” the AFM states. The target is not AI itself, but who gets paid when it is built on human work.
Why Session Musicians Are the Weak Link
The AFM’s argument rests on a structural gap. As CMU explains, a featured artist’s AI rights depend mostly on their record or distribution contract. Songwriters depend on publishing deals and on how collecting societies such as PRS handle AI income. Session musicians have neither. Without copyright reform or a union-negotiated deal, they may receive nothing, which is the “zero” in the campaign’s slogan. That matters because session musicians often play on the very recordings now being licensed for AI training. Their performances are part of the catalog’s value, but their only contractual protection is the labor agreement the union negotiates with the labels.
The Negotiating Table and the Courtroom
The AFM is currently negotiating a new Sound Recording Labor Agreement with the major labels. According to CMU, the talks have gone through four rounds and remain stalled over AI guardrails. Law Commentary reports that negotiations began in January 2026 and that another round is scheduled for November. The campaign is designed to build leverage at the table, in court and across the industry, and the AFM has scheduled a town hall on October 29 to organize it.
The legal front is already open. The AFM has sued Universal Music and Warner Music in US courts. According to Law Commentary, the suit was filed on June 5, 2026 and concerns licensing arrangements with AI companies Suno and Udio. The union argues that letting recordings featuring its members be used for AI training and generation, without notice or compensation, violates the existing labor contract, in particular its “new use” clause, which requires extra payments when recordings are repurposed for certain commercial uses. The labels dispute that reading, and say their deals with the AI companies don’t trigger those obligations. Sony is not reported as a defendant in the lawsuit. It is named, together with Hollywood Records, among the labels the campaign’s demands are directed at.
What We Still Don’t Know
Several things are missing from the public picture. None of the reports gives a dollar figure for what the labels have received from AI licensing, or for what the union is seeking. CMU’s article includes no statement from the labels. Deals of this kind are often covered by NDAs, which is part of the union’s complaint: nobody outside the room can say how much money is involved or how it is allocated. This is the same question we raised when the three majors took equity stakes in Stability AI: the leverage came from catalogs built on artists’ recordings, and the upside went to the companies that own them. The AFM is now trying to turn that argument into contract language.
The Bigger Debate
As CMU’s Chris Cooke noted in his breakdown of the three big debates around music and AI, the majors reportedly don’t believe they need individual artist consent for AI training, and don’t plan to share AI income with session musicians, while some independents offer artists opt-in or opt-out choices. The AFM campaign is the first organized attempt to challenge that position through collective bargaining rather than lobbying. Whether it works will depend on two things: how a court reads a “new use” clause written long before generative AI existed, and whether the majors decide that a labor dispute is a bigger risk than the licensing revenue they are collecting. The next round of talks in November will be the first real test.
Where to Sign
The AFM is asking musicians, and anyone who supports them, to take action through a petition on the campaign’s website: humanmadehumanpaid.com. If you work in music, whether as a performer, producer or engineer, it is worth reading what the union is asking for before the next round of negotiations begins.
Rudy currently based in Bergamo, here since 2019.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rudy-cassago-522452179/
