Fair Trade Music International

03/27/2026

Fair Trade Music International is delighted to welcome Danish songwriter, Anna Lidell, to our board of directors.

Anna is an active artist, composer, entrepreneur and former chair of both KODA and Autor / Komponister og Sangskrivere. She brings invaluable insight into the European music ecosystem.

Appointment brings invaluable European industry insight and experience. At its board meeting on 25 March 2026, FTMI voted unanimously to invite Danish songwriter and composer, Anna Lidell, to join the organisation’s board. Anna is a composer, entrepreneur, and former Chair of KODA (the Danish CMO)...

12/10/2025

Fair Trade Music International has joined Music Creators North America and other songwriter and composer groups around the world in calling for transparency on the deals being announced between major labels and Generative AI corporations.

To date, no detail has been disclosed on how these agreements could impact the ingestion of copyrighted works by large language models or affect the fair remuneration of creators upon whose work the GenAI industry is being built. Transparency is the fundamental first step towards an equitable solution of this complex challenge.

Fair Trade Music International has joined Music Creators North America and other songwriter and composer groups around the world in calling for transparency on the deals being announced between major labels and Generative AI corporations.

10/23/2025

Yesterday, FTMI board members Eddie Schwartz Music and Fondazione Archivio Lorenzo Ferrero were in Johannesburg to hand out the 2025 FTMI awards.

These awards celebrate outstanding contributions to music creators and the ongoing battle to defend their rights as songwriters and composers.

Sincere congratulations to South African singer, songwriter and humanitarian, Yvonne Chaka Chaka, and South Korean composer, musician and producer, Myung Sun Yoon for this well-deserved recognition.

23 October 2025 – Johannesburg, South Africa: Fair Trade Music International (FTMI) has announced South African songwriter and singer, Yvonne Chaka Chaka, and South Korean composer, musician and producer, Myung Sun Yoon, as recipients of the 2025 FTMI Award.

10/23/2025

Congratulations to Yvonne Chaka Chaka and Myung Sun Yoon on their awards.

10/13/2025

Congratulations to our advisory board member for leading this celebration of modern Cape Verdean music.

07/11/2025

Demonstrating that we have working songwriters at the heard of our organisation, FTMI advisory board member Diego Drexler has a new single out today.

"Bye Bye Bye Amor" features Ana Prada and is available on all streaming services.

Listen now on your favorite streaming service. Powered by Songlink/Odesli, an on-demand, customizable smart link service to help you share songs, albums, podcasts and more.

02/25/2025

More than 1,000 musicians have jointly released an album today to protest the UK government’s planned changes to copyright law, which would hand the life’s work of the country’s musicians to generative AI companies for free.

“It’s an album of recordings of empty studios, which is what we’ll get if the government’s plans go ahead. Don’t legalise music theft!”

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01/28/2025

A Portuguese language translation of the Gen AI white paper written by Prof. Daniel Gervais and published by FTMI together with CIAM, is now available to download .

Titled “The Remuneration of Music Creators for the Use of Their Works by Generative AI”, this document aims to address the challenge of ensuring ongoing compensation for music creators and their industry partners once most of the existing music has been used to train large language models.

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Uma tradução em português do white paper Gen AI escrito pelo Prof. Daniel Gervais e publicado pela FTMI em conjunto com o CIAM, está agora disponível para download.

Intitulado “A Remuneração de Criadores de Música pelo Uso de Suas Obras pela IA Generativa”, este documento visa abordar o desafio de garantir compensação contínua para criadores de música e seus parceiros da indústria, uma vez que a maior parte da música existente tenha sido usada para treinar grandes modelos de linguagem.

A Portuguese language translation of the Gen AI white paper written by Prof. Daniel J. Gervais and published by FTMI together with CIAM, is now available to download .

01/15/2025

What could the Bern Convention’s “Three-Step Test” mean for GenAI music?

The three-step test is an important legal doctrine established in 1967 under the Bern Convention. It helps the 181 parties to this treaty to standardise any copyright limitations or exceptions that they wish to add to their respective national copyright laws.

To manufacture their outputs today, GenAI companies take copyrighted material and duplicate it multiple times into datasets and large language models. They do not ask permission, often strip out the rights management metadata and make zero payment to the original creators.

It’s hard to imagine this process not doing “disproportional harm to the rights holder” as required in the three-step test.

Learn more below.

The three-step test is an important legal doctrine established in 1967 under the Bern Convention. It helps the 181 parties to this treaty to standardise any copyright limitations or exceptions that they wish to add to their respective national copyright laws. Whilst the test’s definitions, the thr...

01/13/2025

A Spanish language translation of the Gen AI white paper written by Prof. Daniel Gervais and published by FTMI together with CIAM, is now available to download .

Titled “The Remuneration of Music Creators for the Use of Their Works by Generative AI”, this document aims to address the challenge of ensuring ongoing compensation for music creators and their industry partners once most of the existing music has been used to train large language models.

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Ya está disponible para descargar una traducción al español del informe técnico Gen AI escrito por el profesor Daniel J. Gervais y publicado por FTMI junto con CIAM.

Este documento, titulado “La remuneración de los creadores de música por el uso de sus obras mediante inteligencia artificial generativa”, tiene como objetivo abordar el desafío de garantizar una compensación continua para los creadores de música y sus socios de la industria una vez que la mayor parte de la música existente se haya utilizado para entrenar grandes modelos de lenguaje.

A Spanish language translation of the Gen AI white paper written by Prof. Daniel J. Gervais and published by FTMI together with CIAM, is now available to download .