What do you get when you put Kate Bush, Annie Lennox, and Damon Albarn into a room? A silent, ambient music protest album, of course. On Tuesday February 25, over 1000 artists banded together in a moving protest against a UK government proposal that would allow AI developers to use copy-righted music from creative professionals to train algorithms and other AI models such as ChatGPT and Open AI - unless right holders choose to opt-out. Just when I thought the UK government couldn’t get more whack, lo and behold, it just did.
The protest album, titled Is This What We Want? is now available to stream on platforms like Spotify and Tidal. It is a 12-song project consisting of ambient sound recordings from inside empty recording studios and other performance spaces, intending to shed light on the possible impact the proposal will have on creative livelihoods and the UK music industry. It’s believed that one of the songs was recorded at Kate Bush’s studio, and she didn’t hold back with providing comment on the matter, asking; “in the music of the future, will our voices go unheard?”.
The icon has spoken.
