SoundExchange President and CEO Michael Huppe yesterday announced that the company is developing a global artificial intelligence (AI) registry for sound recording creators and rights owners. Huppe shared the information during a discussion with multi-platinum, GRAMMY® Award-winning producer and artist Timbaland about music rights in an evolving creator landscape at the annual Fast Company Innovation Festival in Manhattan.

The registry will provide a much-needed resource for creators and rights owners to protect their rights related to the use of their content in AI models, allowing them to “reserve” those rights (if they so choose) against training by AI algorithms. While U.S. law does not require such a reservation to protect creators’ rights, the global registry will be another tool to help AI companies properly handle their training data and to help facilitate similar protections in Europe and elsewhere.

Expected to launch in the first quarter of 2025, the registry is an evolution of systems purpose-built by SoundExchange for the collection and distribution of recording royalties and will utilize SoundExchange’s authoritative and comprehensive international standard recording code (ISRC) database. Companies building AI training models will be able to reference the database of authorization declarations before ingesting recordings, helping to ensure appropriate permissions before capitalizing on others’ intellectual property.

“The rapid proliferation of companies building and leveraging AI music models demands creators have an ability to declare easily whether or not they want their work used in that process,” said Michael Huppe, President and CEO of SoundExchange. “Our driving mission is to simplify the music industry and protect the value of music. Because of our role in the music industry and our authoritative data, SoundExchange is in a unique and trusted position to create an AI sound recordings registry. We see this as another opportunity to bridge the information gap while keeping control in the hands of the creators and rights owners and providing AI companies with a centralized resource for researching consent.”

Record labels and other rights owners would still have the ability to undertake a reservation of rights individually with each AI company (as some have done). The SoundExchange AI registry will supplement that ability and facilitate economies of scale in the notification process. The database will be a voluntary tool, and rights owners will maintain all legal rights to their recordings regardless of their listing in the registry.

As the sole organization designated by the U.S. government to administer the country’s non-interactive streaming license, SoundExchange maintains the world’s largest and most comprehensive music rights catalogue, comprised of more than 126 million sound recordings. The organization is designated by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to maintain U.S. ISRCs and operates the industry’s largest sanctioned ISRC database.

SoundExchange is a founding member of the Human Artistry Campaign, a global alliance of more than 170 organizations from 34 countries that recognizes the value of AI as a tool for artists, but fundamentally believes that AI can never replace human expression, creativity, and artistry.