Case study · Firm-built tier
A firm-built music platform that lets creators generate original songs in any artist's signature style and pays the source artist automatically. Operating publicly at imused.ai. Compliance, attribution and royalty share are designed in, not bolted on.
Generative AI is being trained on artists' work without their consent and without compensation. Can a venture be built that inverts the default — where attribution is mandatory at the moment of creation, the source artist is named, and the royalty split is enforced by the product itself?
CROWD POWERED, firm-built configuration. The mission-focused operating model applies: revenue is reinvested into the venture and into artist payouts. Compliance with U.S. copyright (17 U.S.C.) and PRO reporting obligations is treated as a design constraint, not an afterthought.
A live, operating venture. SongCraft™ AI generation engine; "Musical DNA" profiles across twelve-plus dimensions; mandatory PRO registration before commercial generation; public attribution ledger; tiered royalty share (10% for user-generated profiles, 20% for Certified DNA); commercial-use licence baked into the paid tiers.
Two counterfactuals were rejected. (1) The legacy AI-music model — train on any catalogue, ship the product, settle litigation later. (2) The opt-in marketplace model — invite artists in, but make attribution optional for users. iMused rejects both: attribution and royalty share are enforced by the product before the first commercial generation can fire.
iMused is a firm-built music platform operated under Power In Numbers. The
product, SongCraft™ AI, generates original songs in any registered
artist’s signature style — what the firm calls a Musical DNA Profile — and
pays the source artist automatically through a designed-in royalty share. The
operating identity is plain on the property: “Protect the art. Empower the
artist. Create without compromise.” The legal contact for the venture is
legal@power-in-numbers.net; the attribution ledger lives at
app.imused.ai/AttributionLog. Both are visible on the live site.
The firm took the position that the dominant model for generative AI in music — train on the catalogue, ship the product, litigate later — is structurally extractive in exactly the way CROWD POWERED was built to refuse. The development question, named at the front of the engagement, was therefore narrow:
Can a venture be built where attribution is mandatory at the moment of creation, the source artist is named on the work, and the royalty split is enforced by the product itself?
The answer the firm advanced is iMused. The site reads as the audit trail.
SongCraft™ AI takes a one-line prompt and a Musical DNA Profile, and emits a single bundled output:
Commercial generation is gated. A user cannot commercialise a SongCraft output without registering legal name, IPI number, and PRO affiliation (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, AllTrack, GMR, or PRO Music Rights) inside the product. The compliance gate is a feature.
The platform names its constituency in two halves:
The royalty tiering is explicit on the property:
| Profile type | Royalty share to source artist |
|---|---|
| User-generated DNA Profile | 10% |
| Certified DNA Profile | 20% |
The relevant integrity question is not whether iMused complies with U.S. copyright. The question is whether compliance is enforced by the product itself, or merely promised. The firm’s position is that promised compliance is not compliance. Two design choices flow from that:
The pricing tiers are not just a revenue mechanism — they encode the policy the venture is enforcing.
| Plan | Price | Posture |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 / month | Two profiles, five generations / month. Non-commercial only. The on-ramp. |
| Basic | $19 / month | Fifty profiles, one hundred generations / month. Certified DNA access. Commercial licence. The working tier. |
| Premium | $49 / month | Unlimited profiles and generations. Priority support. The professional tier. |
All paid plans carry a commercial-use licence; the licence is what the royalty share rides on. The structure deliberately keeps the on-ramp frictionless and the commercial gate firm.
Per the case anchors above:
iMused implements neither. The product is opt-in for artists and mandatory for users. The royalty share fires by design before the first commercial song ships.
Every claim made above can be verified directly on the live property:
legal@power-in-numbers.net;
privacy contact imused_privacy@power-in-numbers.net.app.imused.ai/AttributionLog.Venture site: https://imused.ai/