Kate Bush has appeared on her first studio album since 2011 – although fans won’t get to hear it.
The reclusive artist is one of 1,000 musicians, along with fellow stars such as Imogen Heap, Annie Lennox and Damon Albarn, to record a silent album in protest against proposed changes to copyright law around artificial intelligence.
The album, titled Is This What We Want?, features recordings of empty studios and performance spaces, which the artists warn would become the reality of the music business if the changes go ahead.
It was released on Tuesday (25 February) to coincide with the end of a government consultation on changes to copyright law, in which a waiver for AI firms is the proposed option.
The music-free album represents the impact on artists’ livelihoods should the government push ahead with its plans, British composer and former AI executive Ed Newton-Rex, who organised the project, warned.
“The government’s proposal would hand the life’s work of the country’s musicians to AI companies, for free, letting those companies exploit musicians’ work to outcompete them,” he said.
“It is a plan that would not only be disastrous for musicians, but that is totally unnecessary. The UK can be leaders in AI without throwing our world-leading creative industries under the bus.
“This album shows that, however the government tries to justify it, musicians themselves are united in their thorough condemnation of this ill-thought-through plan.”
Under the proposals, an exemption to copyright would be created for training AI, so tech firms would not need a licence to use copyrighted material, and creators would need to opt out to prevent their work from being used.
Critics of the proposals have argued that it fails to reimburse artists for AI recreating and copying their work, would stifle creativity, and that the proposed opt-out scheme places an unnecessary burden on artists.
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Billy Ocean, The Clash, Jamiroquai, Imogen Heap and a range of Grammy, Oscar and Brit Award-winning composers, conductors, singers and producers are credited on the project.
The track listing spells out the message: “The British government must not legalise music theft to benefit AI companies.”
All profits will be donated to the musicians’ charity, Help Musicians.
Musicians including Paul McCartney and Elton John are among those to have called for protection of their work from unlicensed use by tech companies in recent months.
Others have warned that government proposals to change UK copyright law to allow AI models to be more easily trained on copyrighted material would cause untold damage to the creative sector, and see human artists replaced in the long term.
UK music contributed £7.6bn to the UK economy in 2023, with exports of British music reaching £4.6bn.
Dan Conway, chief executive of the Publishers Association, the trade organisation representing book, journal and electronic publishers in the UK, said: “The extraordinary strength of support shown in recent weeks for copyright and our world-class creative industries is something the Government ignores at its peril.
“When Booker, Grammy, Oscar and Nobel prize winners are united in calling on the Government for a fair hearing, we have to hope they listen.”
This week also saw the publication of a letter in The Times from 34 leading creatives, including Ed Sheeran, Helen Fielding, Barbara Broccoli, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Fry, warning that the proposals “represent a wholesale giveaway of rights and income from the UK’s creative sector’s to Big Tech”.
“You don’t promote growth in a garden by allowing all the pests to feast on the fruit and flowers, and you don’t promote growth in an economy by allowing all the AIs to feast on the fruits of our creators,” Fry said.
