London April 2025 - With PRS for Music, CISAC DG Gadi Oron and Björn Ulvaeus.

I’m always careful to post on my ‘day job’ at CISAC, keeping my creative life separate from the corporate always felt like a necessity in maintaining some kind of balance between the two. However there are many times when the two cross, when my experiences of having a space in the two merge into something much bigger that will (hopefully) make some sort of difference. The last couple of weeks has been a great example of this.

It was an honour to be able to bring CISAC’s president Björn Ulvaeus to the UK to speak politicians on why legislation that allows transparency and protection for the creative sector is so important. We as a creative community already suffer huge economic and personal losses through the way the system works, and whilst the possibilities are endlessly exciting in this technological space, I for one am fed up of not being paid for creative output I’ve made (and have trained many years to refine and make). Without safeguards, and transparency I can only see this getting worse, and I worry what that means for the future of the talent pipeline.

As songwriters we work within the constraints of the commercial domain. AI is a fantastic tool that will allow a further evolution, and for a possible reshaping of this paradigm. What we don’t want is for the paradigm to start dictating to us what it means to be human. It’s a dystopian prospect, but my role on the frontline of this globally causes me daily concern on this as well as the sustainability of it.

It’s a global issue that in the fractured world we live in is difficult to solve. I’d like to think my home turf can be a leader in this, as it has been in shaping a lot of the music, films, TV, and visual arts we love.

I’d like to thank everyone involved in this, as well as to UNESCO for inviting me to speak in Brussels on AI and Creativity last week. It’s been mad, but productive! :)

A day in the life of the day job - campaigning on AI