Catamount Veritas, August 2025

Volume One, Issue Three

Welcome to the August edition of Catamount Veritas. As always, we explore the crucial intersection of generative AI, artist rights, and sync music. 

Industry Watch

• The Udio/Suno lawsuit remains ongoing, with no major new developments this month.
• The Library of Congress continues to explore C2PA with a working group, quarterly meetings, and an exploration into digital preservation workflows.

White House AI Policy: A Shift in Direction?

A few weeks ago, the White House announced its new AI policy. For a visceral and vulnerable take, we recommend watching Victoria Hylak’s real-time review on YouTube. She concludes that the policy is a significant change from previous Biden administration guidance, prioritizing rapid implementation and the removal of guardrails. Hylak also expressed concern that the government will be determining which companies are free from ideological bias.

WeTransfer’s New Terms: The ‘SoundCloud’ of File Transfer?

In July, WeTransfer updated its terms of service, allowing for the broad use of any transferred content in AI training. The irony is frustratingly rich: how many creators have been using WeTransfer to get their music off of SoundCloud, only to now fall into an unforeseen and pernicious trap?

This is not a small issue for the sync community, as many musicians use WeTransfer for transfer and collaboration. The update is forcing people to decide if they want to continue using the service or switch to an alternative like Dropbox. The issue spreads virally, with small pockets of the community deciding to make a change. For music producers, changing any single element in their “tech stack” can be disruptive, but a critical tool like file transfer is central to the workflow.

Sync Music & Music Production

A New Ethical Player in Generative Music: ElevenMusic

A new player is emerging in the world of ethical generative AI music. ElevenMusic, from ElevenLabs, has a text-to-music interface and appears to have handled its training ethically, respecting artist rights and even offering compensation. They have also committed to adopting C2PA. I have been hesitant to use Suno and Udio because of training concerns, but with that removed, I’ve started experimenting with ElevenMusic and have had decent results. Look for a social media update soon!

AI in Your Workflow: A ChatGPT Recipe for Sound Design

Looking for a practical way to use AI in your music production workflow? Check out this great short from AlexMDrums. He needed a specific synth sound and had ChatGPT create a recipe for it. The results were great, with ChatGPT providing step-by-step instructions for a complex synth configuration that dropped right into the mix. Watch the YouTube short here.

Sync Savvy: A New ChatGPT Agent for the Sync Community

In the sync community, there’s a nifty new tool called Sync Savvy, a ChatGPT agent from Luke Truan. I’ve run it a bit and it provides not only a pragmatic list of short and medium-term actions but also a lot of the resource references needed to pursue them. It’s a great tool—go check out out Sync Savvy! Thanks, Luke!

The Music Producer’s Toolkit: Trying Out Songbox

Also new in the music producer’s toolkit – Songbox – a new collaboration tool design by couple of industry insiders. I’ve been frankly avoiding setting up Disco for a long time now, so I decide to give Songbox a try. If you’d like to see it, check out our Christmas Song on Songbox.

Content Authenticity

Catamount Music Joins the C2PA as a Contributing Member

Last month, we announced that Catamount Music had joined the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI). This month, we’re proud to announce that we were formally accepted as a contributing member of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA). We’re excited to have achieved this designation on our one-year business anniversary and look forward to advocating for and implementing C2PA in the field. Everything we publish from now on will be watermarked and have C2PA provenance. You can also explore our new C2PA resource page for the more technically inclined. Also, it’s possible there is a YouTube channel in the works. Shhhhhhh.

C2PA News: A Transparent Response to an Online Attack

In other C2PA news, Numbers Protocol publicly disclosed that they suffered an online attack. The incident appears to have been limited to social media and brand impact, as hackers used the Numbers Protocol brand to launch online scams. It seems that the core infrastructure around C2PA or other content authenticity technology was not affected. Read their disclosures here. I applaud them for their transparency. While many companies fear that this kind of disclosure might be bad for business, the directness with which Numbers Protocol handled it gives me more confidence in them, not less.

And that’s a wrap for August. Enjoy the last of the vacation season and we’ll do it all over again in September.