What This Policy Covers

Made by Humans Records was founded on a single non-negotiable: the music is real. Real instruments, real voices, real songs written by the people performing them. This policy defines what that means in practice and where we draw every line. Any artist signing to MbH agrees to this policy as a condition of their deal. This is not a suggestion. It is a requirement.

The Music

• No AI-generated music, melodies, or instrumentation.
• No AI vocals or voice synthesis.
• No AI mixing or mastering tools, including any platform that makes creative decisions on its own.
• No AI-generated artwork or visual assets tied to a release.

If it replaces a human creative decision, it doesn’t belong on an MbH record.

The Songs

Every song released under MbH is written by the artist performing it, or written collaboratively with full and honest credit given to everyone involved. What we don’t do is let someone perform a song they had no hand in writing and present it as their own. Ghostwriting has no place here. If you didn’t write it, you don’t take sole credit for it.

Any samples used in an MbH release must be original recordings made by the artist using them. We don’t pull from other people’s work, cleared or not. If it’s in the song, you made it.

Covers have a place in music and always will. An artist interpreting someone else’s song honestly is one of the oldest traditions in music. Covers released under MbH will be properly licensed and clearly identified as interpretations of another artist’s work. We give credit. Always.

The Performance

No pitch correction used as a performance replacement. If the take isn’t there, you do another take. A tool that fixes what a human should have done is a tool that replaces the human. That’s where autotune became a problem for the industry and we’re not going down that road.

Live shows must reflect the recorded work honestly. No backing tracks or pre-recorded elements presented as live performance. If a part exists in the song and there is no one on stage playing it, that should be disclosed or it shouldn’t be there. The audience deserves to know what they are watching.

Live DJ sets performed at MbH shows are performed live on real hardware. We respect DJing as a craft and we hold it to the same standard as every other live performance on our stage. Pressing play is not a performance. Reading a room, mixing in real time, and controlling the energy of the music with your hands is.

Visuals

No AI-generated footage, deepfakes, or synthetic visuals in official MbH music videos or promotional content. The same standard that applies to the music applies to everything released under our name. If a human didn’t make it, it doesn’t represent us.

The Business

We use AI tools to operate more efficiently as a company: code assistance, research, documents, scheduling, administrative work. Everything is edited and approved by a human. None of that is the art and none of it is what you’re buying, streaming, or coming to see live.

Any writing that represents an artist’s voice: bios, liner notes, personal statements. All of it is written by that artist or a human working directly with them. We will never use AI to write on behalf of an artist.

Violations

We take breaches of this policy seriously. Artists operating within the collective are ultimately responsible for their own work and we cannot control every decision made outside of an official MbH release. However, any music released under the MbH name or through our label goes through a quality control process specifically to ensure these standards are met before anything goes out.

If a violation occurs, we will address it openly and publicly. We won’t hide it. That’s the same standard we hold the industry to and we hold ourselves to it too.

Why It Matters

The music industry has spent decades finding ways to remove the human from the equation. Committee-written songs performed by artists who had no say in them. Vocals tuned until they sound like a different person. Now AI-generated artists to cut out the human altogether. We think all of it is the same problem.

We’re not anti-technology. We’re pro-human. Every creative decision on an MbH record was made by a person with a body, a brain, and something to say. That’s the standard.