[Wolfstar]

Netizen and GSC, I noticed your discussion of what rights AI obtains. It's use rights. Anyone who uses a copyrighted song for any commercial purpose must obtain use rights from the owner of the property. Usually that's the songwriter(s) or his/her heirs or assignees. It could also be someone who bought the songs outright. For example, Michael Jackson (and his creditors) own the Beatles catalog.

AI does not buy the songs they use, and they have had problems getting use rights to a lot of popular music.

[Netizen]

How long are the use rights good for?

[Netizen]

If they are only getting rights to use (sing) the songs and nothing else, why wouldn't you want to let someone else sing it? It would seem like a good means of advertising, to me. Especially, in a case where the singers are constestants and not likely to be better than the original. Somethimes they are but not generally.

[GraniteStateConservative]

I am positive that I have read that AI pays like $1K or so per song to get licensing and that some owners have wanted more than AI wanted to pay, so those songs didn't get approval.