Producing music with AI does not strip you of every right — but of different ones than before. Without a human creative contribution there is no protected work under German and European copyright, and collecting societies on the authors' side will not accept such a production. Rights in the sound recording follow a different logic. Set your production up accordingly and you keep a basis for exploitation. Prompt and nothing else, and you lose both.
Where things stand: The legal position is moving and several questions are unresolved. This page states what we consider defensible and names what is still open. It is not legal advice.
The legal position
German copyright law requires a personal intellectual creation. On the current reading, a prompt alone does not meet that bar. Your own lyrics, a melody you composed, substantial post-production can establish a protectable share — but that share has to be evidenced. Purely generated productions are not accepted as works.
Section 85 of the German Copyright Act attaches to the economic and organisational effort of producing the recording, not to creative height. A right in the recording can therefore exist where no right in the work does. Who renders that effort in a given case is the decisive question — and for AI productions it is not yet settled.
The performer's right presupposes a human performance. Generated vocals and instruments do not create it. If you play, sing or conduct yourself, you hold it — even where other parts of the same production came out of the model.
In practice
Which parts are yours, which came from the model? Project files, sessions, intermediate states, timestamps. Anyone who first looks for this when a society asks usually no longer has it.
The terms of the AI services differ on who owns the output and what you may do with it commercially. In practice that settles more cases than the statute does.
One ISRC per recording, unambiguous titles, consistent metadata across every version and edit. Without that, no use can be matched to you — whichever right turns out to apply.
Human contributions on the authors' side, recordings on the neighbouring rights side, and both with the societies in whose territories the material is actually broadcast and used.
Common questions
Only where there is a sufficient human creative contribution and you can evidence it. Purely generated productions are not works in the legal sense and cannot be registered.
The producer's side does not turn on creative height but on entrepreneurial effort. How far that carries for fully generated productions is currently unsettled. We will tell you what we consider defensible in your case, and where we do not know.
On the current reading, no. What counts are your own creative decisions in the result — lyrics, composition, arrangement, substantial editing — not the instruction given to the tool.
That is the normal case and usually the better position. Instruments you played, your own voice, your own arrangement establish shares that generated elements do not cancel out. What matters is that those shares can still be shown later.
No. Everything made without AI is unaffected. Using AI in new productions changes nothing about the old ones.
In part, yes, and we would rather say so than paper over it. What is already settled: without documentation and without properly identified recordings, nothing can be enforced later, however the open questions are decided.
First conversation
We look at which parts of your productions stand up, what can be registered and what cannot — and we will tell you when the effort is not worth it.