Photo Credit: Stick Figure (with Cocoa the Tour Dog) by Sue Kastle / CC by 4.0
An American act made it big in South Africa, but an AI version of their song went viral on TikTok and stole their thunder. Unfortunately, it’s a growing phenomenon.
It seems like AI is sticking its proverbial fingers into everybody’s pie, and no artist seems safe from it regardless of where they fall on the totem pole. To that point, Ineffable Music Group founder and CEO Thomas Cussins contacted Digital Music News with the story of indie reggae and dub artist Stick Figure, whose sudden success in South Africa became overshadowed by an AI version of his most popular song.
An American artist with roots in Massachusetts and California, Stick Figure hit the ground running in South Africa during the pandemic, after a local DJ moved his radio show online and played his then-little-known track “Angels Above Me.” Suddenly, Stick Figure was a household name in Afrikaans-speaking regions of South Africa.
“Fast forward to a few days ago, April 24th, 2026. An AI version of ‘Angels Above Me,’ renamed ‘Run Run River’ after the first lyric in the song, was posted to TikTok by a South African account that posts unauthorized AI versions of popular songs,” Cussins told DMN.
“This clip has a female-sounding AI voice and a techno AI iteration of the beat, but it’s Stick Figure’s song: his identical lyrics, tune, and song structure. Importantly, this AI-generated version does not mention the song’s original composer, and Stick Figure is not tagged to the sound in any way.”
“This stolen version of the song starts to spread. Hundreds and then thousands of versions start popping up over the next few days; dances and lifestyle posts start going up in the tens of thousands, with millions of views compounding each day. Then these sounds begin to migrate to YouTube and Spotify, reaching #2 on the global Shazam chart as of today, where they are earning tens of thousands of dollars in royalties as I type these words.”
And, as Cussins points out, none of these royalties are going to Stick Figure.
It’s a phenomenon exacerbating an already difficult environment for independent artists, between the current pro rata payment structure of royalties on DSPs and the Copyright Office’s recently proposed 43% copyright registration price increase. Add to that AI content taking a bigger piece of the pie in terms of royalties, ad revenue, and user attention with each passing day—from musicians and podcasters alike—and the industry finds itself in an unsatisfactory situation, to say the least.
“Trying to play whack-a-mole and issue thousands of takedowns is not the answer,” said Cussins. “Instead, we need to require distributors of AI-generated music to identify the source material, credit it, and allocate the lion’s share of all revenue generated to the original creators. We need to ensure that the publishing revenue for the composition of the song stays 100% with the original source.”
“This provides a pathway to legitimacy for the creators of AI music, while supporting the music ecosystem instead of exploiting it. It only took a few months for this problem to balloon from petty theft to grand theft worldwide; we need to act now to ensure that music artists continue to be recognized and rewarded for the joy and creativity they bring to our lives, and that ‘Independent Music Artist’ remains a viable career for the next generation of innovators.”
Cussins further asserts that an industry-wide move to a user-centric payout model would complement this approach by paying each artist based on each individual listener’s habits. He points to Deezer as a DSP leading the way with its user-centric payout model, as well as regulating the influx of so-called AI slop by labeling it.
“If we want independent artists to continue to make the music their fans love, we urgently need comprehensive action by stakeholders throughout the music industry,” Cussins concludes. “AI creations should credit and compensate the original artists; music distributors should move toward a user-centric payout model; and we should all support music platforms that stand up for human artists, even as we embrace the responsible use of AI.”
