With ASCAP, BMI and SOCAN Unity, a New Era for Human Creators and AI Tools

Honoring human authorship and authenticity, even when AI tools are used in the creative process, the three major North American PROs will now accept registrations of partially AI-generated musical works.

ASCAP, BMI and SOCAN Announce Alignment on AI Registration Policies

In a major show of unity, North America’s three largest performance rights organizations (PROs) — ASCAP, BMI, and SOCAN — have announced a coordinated move to allow registration of partially AI-generated musical works.

The new AI policy, revealed jointly in New York and Toronto on October 28, 2025, mark a significant step toward defining how artificial intelligence fits into the professional music ecosystem. This might not sound like something beneficial to artists, but let’s break down what exactly this means, and why it’s something to keep an eye on!

What the New Policies Mean

Under the new alignment, each organization will now accept registrations for compositions that combine human creativity with elements generated by AI tools. If a songwriter uses AI to assist their creative process — generating chord progressions, melodic fragments, or lyric suggestions — that song can now be formally registered and earn performance royalties, just like any other copyrighted work.

However, works that are entirely created by AI — with no human authorship or creative input — remain ineligible for registration. This distinction echoes broader industry and legal discussions about authorship, ownership, and what qualifies as original creative expression under copyright law.

Defending Creators in the AI Era

ASCAP, BMI, and SOCAN collectively represent the vast majority of songwriters and composers across the U.S. and Canada. By aligning their policies, the three societies have sent a unified message about the importance of keeping human creativity at the center of music’s future.

This reaffirms the PROs opposition to AI developers that use copyrighted music to train their models without authorization, stressing that this kind of unlicensed data scraping is not “fair use,” but theft — a position increasingly shared by songwriters’ unions and industry coalitions. To this end, each PRO has also supported legislative and legal efforts to strengthen protections for music creators. ASCAP, BMI, and SOCAN have all backed initiatives from the U.S. Copyright Office, the White House, and the Government of Canada to ensure that copyright law keeps up with emerging technology.

Elizabeth Matthews, CEO of ASCAP, welcomes “partially AI-generated works because AI can be a powerful tool for our members — as long as the law puts humans first and technology companies play fair.” and Jennifer Brown, CEO of SOCAN, described the policy as a “legal and ethical path forward” that allows music to evolve “while keeping creativity deeply human.”

Why This Matters for Working Artists

Until now, artists who used AI-assisted tools like Suno, Udio, or Anthropic’s Melody model to generate ideas faced uncertainty:

• Would their songs qualify for royalty collection?
• Would co-writers or collaborators be credited properly?

The new policy gives both clarity and a route for fair compensation to artists experimenting responsibly with new technology.

This also marks a subtle but important shift in how the creative process is understood. Many artists already rely on digital plugins, machine learning-based mastering, and generative lyric prompts. By explicitly acknowledging these hybrid workflows, ASCAP, BMI, and SOCAN are recognizing the reality of modern music-making — and ensuring artists don’t have to choose between innovation and income.

And finally, it shows that the institutions tasked with protecting artists’ rights and income, really do have artists’ best interests in mind; and that at least for now, they’re working to cement those rights in the wake of fast, unpredictable change.

For working artists, this means something simple but powerful: you can experiment with AI without losing your rights.

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) is a membership association of more than 1.1 million songwriters, composers and music publishers, and represents some of the world’s most talented music creators. Founded and governed by songwriters, composers and publishers, it returns nearly 90 cents of every dollar collected to its members as royalties and has the lowest overhead rate of any U.S. PRO.

Celebrating over 80 years of service to songwriters, composers, music publishers and businesses, BMI® is a global leader in music rights management, serving as an advocate for the value of music. BMI represents the public performance rights in over 22.4 million musical works created and owned by more than 1.4 million songwriters, composers, and music publishers.

SOCAN is Canada’s largest member-owned music rights organization, with over 200,000 songwriters, composers, and music publishers as its direct members. We licence the public performance and reproduction of music, match royalties to rights holders, and advocate for fair compensation for the use of all music in Canada.