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In the 1980s, finding the right song for a film or TV scene could take days. Music supervisors would call libraries like APM, wait for vinyl records to arrive, and manually search through stacks of albums. Fast forward to today, and that same process takes seconds. Thanks to assistive AI, creators can now search massive music catalogs using natural language prompts like “hopeful but unsettling orchestral build” or “uplifting but melancholic,” instantly discovering tracks that fit both the mood and the moment.
This shift reflects not only faster discovery, but explosive growth in content and demand. APM’s catalog has expanded from 160,000 tracks in 2002 to more than 1.4 million tracks in 2025, serving everyone from film studios to TikTok creators, podcasters, gamers, and streamers.
Production Music Becomes the Backbone of Digital Culture
Production music, once focused mainly on TV and film, now underpins much of digital culture. It fuels everything from branded content and podcasts to gaming streams and viral social media trends. A notable example is Curtis Wiley’s a cappella track “Back To Me,” which gained viral traction after appearing in the TV show PEN15, showing how licensed production music can now travel rapidly from traditional media to global social platforms.
As more creators rely on licensed music to avoid takedowns and boost engagement, the ability to quickly find and legally use tracks has become essential, not optional.
Protecting Creators at Digital Scale
But discovery is only half the story. As billions of videos are uploaded to platforms like YouTube each year, ensuring composers and rights-holders are paid has become a massive challenge. In the early 2000s, cue sheets and royalty tracking relied heavily on manual data entry and spreadsheets, leaving significant revenue unclaimed.
Today, companies like Orfium use AI to scan hundreds of millions of uploads, identify music usage in real time, and match it to the correct catalogs. By 2026, Orfium expects to surpass $1 billion in recovered royalties returned to rights-holders—money that might otherwise never reach creators. Assistive AI also cuts cue sheet processing time dramatically, helping improve payment accuracy and licensing transparency across the industry.
Building an Ethical AI Future for Music
Assistive AI is also helping future-proof the industry as generative technologies continue to advance. While APM does not accept AI-generated music into its catalog, both APM and Orfium support building systems that can detect copyrighted material within AI-generated outputs.
Last year, Orfium received European Commission funding as part of a research consortium with institutions including Sorbonne University and the University of Barcelona to develop attribution and tracking tools for AI-generated content. As Adam Taylor of APM and Rob Wells of Orfium note, “The same rights technology that helps composers today will be vital in governing attribution, ownership and payment in the AI-assisted future.”
Ultimately, the lesson for the music industry is clear: while generative AI may dominate headlines, assistive AI is quietly doing the essential work of discovery, licensing, and monetization. By investing in technology that supports creators rather than replacing them, the industry can ensure that production music remains both culturally powerful and economically sustainable in the digital age.
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