Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Is This What We Want? is an unusual protest album. It has been released by 1,000 UK Artists, a colossal supergroup comprising more than 1,000 UK artists (and some non-British ones). Participants include Kate Bush, Annie Lennox, Damon Albarn and Hans Zimmer. They are fighting the UK government’s proposal to alter copyright law in order to help tech companies train generative AI programmes.The project has been organised by Ed Newton-Rex, a dissident AI music entrepreneur. Its target is data-mining by AI models as they learn how to make music. 1,000 UK Artists claim that their rights will be trampled if the government proceeds with its plans.Each of the 12 tracks has a one-word title, together forming an acrostic alert: “The British Government Must Not Legalise Music Theft To Benefit AI Companies”. We steel ourselves for the angry strumming of multiple guitars as Bush and Albarn wail, and Zimmer furiously waves his conductor’s baton as if swatting wasps. But what we encounter instead is silence. Or rather, near silence.Each track lasts about four minutes and contains no vocals or instruments. The obvious inspiration is “4’33”, John Cage’s note-free composition. Indeed, it might seem a bit rich of 1,000 UK Artists to complain about their rights being abrogated while glomming onto Cage’s inspired exercise in ambient sound. But there is a crucial difference.“4’33” is meant to be performed in concert halls where the intended silence is broken by the faint sounds of musicians and the audience failing to keep quiet. Here, however, the focus switches from the act of performance to the act of recording.Electronic hums are heard in each track, subtly different in pitch. Buttons are pressed, doors clang, footsteps thump. Drinks are swallowed, a breath is exhaled. We are conscious of the muffled outlines of people in a setting devoted to capturing sound. The absence of voices and instruments makes it easier to picture mixing desks, consoles and microphones, the apparatus of the studio.Technological change is vital to recorded music. It has often provoked pushback, not always presciently: drummers were wrong to fear the spread of drum machines in the 1980s. But something has gone awry in the intertwined relationship of music and technology. New anxieties about AI join long-standing complaints about lowly streaming revenue. This silent protest album says a lot.★★★★☆‘Is This What We Want?’ is released by Virgin Music
