Petition addressed to: US Congress
To preserve human creativity, enable independent musicians to work together, and negotiate sustainable terms in the digital music economy, we urge Congress to pass the Protect Working Musicians Act.
We are a group of Duke University students, faculty, and staff researching the effects of AI on music.
Music plays a unique role in American life. It brings people together across generations, regions, and backgrounds, and it remains one of the few cultural spaces shared by communities nationwide. At the same time, music is a livelihood and a profession. For millions of creators, it is increasingly difficult to earn a sustainable living from that work.
As the music industry has moved online, power has become concentrated in the hands of a small number of dominant streaming and distribution platforms. Independent musicians are left to negotiate individually against companies with enormous market influence, often with little transparency and no meaningful leverage. This imbalance has made it harder for artists to receive fair compensation for the music that connects and enriches our communities.
The Protect Working Musicians Act offers a practical, market-based solution by allowing independent music creators to collectively bargain with dominant online platforms where they do not currently have a place at the table. This approach preserves competition while ensuring that creators have a seat at the table, an outcome that benefits artists, listeners, and the long-term health of the music ecosystem alike.
These challenges are becoming even more urgent as artificial intelligence and algorithmic distribution reshape how music is created, promoted, and monetized. Without clear protections, human musicians risk being crowded out by systems that prioritize scale and cost over creativity and cultural value. Safeguarding fair negotiation rights now will help ensure that innovation strengthens, rather than replaces, the human voices at the heart of music.
Passing the Protect Working Musicians Act would:
We respectfully call on Congress to come together in support of the Protect Working Musicians Act and to affirm that the people who create the music we all enjoy deserve fair treatment in the modern economy.
Petition started:
02/17/2026
Collection ends:
12/31/2026, 23:59 GMT-5
Region:
United States of America
Topic:
Culture
Because billions are being put into AI, and if it is left completely unregulated and outside/above the law, it WILL be abused, and it WILL be used to take anything and everything it can from people.
It's already being used to circumvent copyright, and even lawyers are getting repeatedly caught using it to do up their cases, and it's coming *fake rulings* to try and win cases.
*People* have already shown *they cannot safely and legally use AI without rules and oversight.
There is no qualification required, so people are *literally* UNQUALIFIED by default to use what are pitentially *dangerous tools* in the hands of untrained users.
AI is being used to attack on *every front* in the job market.
It's too expensive to be self supporting, so, to start making back the billions they are investing, they need to replace every human in every job, that they can manage to.
Of course, that's a self defeating business model, because every human who's job is taken by an AI is *one less potential customer*.
So the AI industry is somewhat set up to, eventually, eat itself.
But modern greed-driven industries only focus on growth and acquisition, , growth, and acquisition. Taking and making as much as possible, without worrying about consequences. Maybe they think they can just bail out as the bubble begins to crash? Or maybe they only think about one side of the equation, and being themselves to the other?
Or maybe they listen to their own AI that is trained to only tell them what they want to hear?
Whatever their reason, the reality is the same.
That rules and laws HAVE to be put in place to slow them down, and/or stop them before it's too late, because they WILL NOT slow down, or stop, themselves.
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I love music