About fifteen years ago, I was doing some work in the music industry when one afternoon, I was invited with people who were a lot more important people than me, to the London headquarters of one of the biggest social media companies in the world. They wanted to show us the amazing social media music app that they had integrated into their platform.
Plying us with expensive canapés and alcohol, they demonstrated how powerful their new social media music app was and how it was going to be a game changer for the music industry.
It was all going very well until one of the music industry representatives asked,
“So how much are you going to pay us for use of our artist’s music?”
The tech bros in the room looked dumbfounded, and an icy chill spread rapidly amongst the music industry representatives as it became apparent that the tech bros were expecting the artist’s music to be handed over for free. After all, why wouldn’t the music industry representatives want to be a part of the most exciting innovation in music technology ever?
The answer from all the music industry representatives in the room was a resounding ‘no’. Once we’d finished all the canopies and alcohol, we departed, leaving behind a baffled group of tech bros who weren’t able to grasp that their offer of endless free promotion (there really is no such thing) was something nobody wanted and they couldn’t understand the music industry representatives’ demands that the musicians were not going to be exploited without proper payment.
A few months later the music social media app disappeared, never to be seen again. After all what’s the point in a whizz bang fancy bit of technology if the content they needed to make it fly wasn’t available?
Why is any of this relevant to people in social care and health? AI is being promoted as a wonder technology that will save social care and health and that will deliver immense productivity gains. To achieve this we are told that all we need to do is hand over for free, all of our content (data) about people who draw on care and support and people with healthcare needs and all our resources on our websites to the tech bros.
Now I’m sure, and I fervently believe, that artificial intelligence does have an important role to play in social care and health. I have seen myself, what a useful tool it can be. But we should not under any circumstances be enabling the tech bros to make vast amounts of money out of people’s social care and health data and our organisations’ websites without fair and proper recompense for all those people who draw on care and support and people with healthcare needs and the organisations that support them.
How could this work in practice? It has taken the music industry ten to fifteen years to sort it out and even now there’s still some sorting out to be done. One of the best ways to learn about this and to think about how we might apply it to social care and health is by reading the Music Managers Forum’s book – Dissecting the Digital Dollar which is now in it’s third edition.
If you look at it from a music industry perspective there are five main types of content: the music itself, text about the music or any written material about the musician, video of the musician (both playing their music and talking about their music) and still images of the musician. Each of these is a copyrightable source of revenue for the musician in the digital world.
If we start to explore the challenges of artificial intelligence, we have the added issues around AI taking that content, manipulating that content and creating music, video, text and images that mimic the original work without the permission or any financial recompense going to the musician themself. It’s no wonder that musicians are very concerned for their futures as there are very few that make enough money from their music to survive on. Artificial intelligence threatens to blow up these income streams and an awful lot of creativity as well.
With social care and health if we think of people who draw care and support and people with healthcare treatment needs and the workers who support them as musicians and social care and health care organisations as the industry that supports everyone then the same challenges apply.
Technology, and in particular artificial intelligence, are certainly bound to deliver positive benefits, although I’ve yet to see a full list of the benefits.
At its simplest level, every time AI uses a piece of work that has been published on a digital platform by a social care or health organisation, then we should expect the tech bros to pay us a fee. This could be on a sliding scale so that if a particular piece of work is being used a lot by the tech bros, then the amount paid per use might change.
If AI and other forms of digital technology want to use personal data then we need to see this as being no different to the individual contribution that musicians make to society. Therefore every time a technology organisation wants to use people’s individual data a fee should be payable to that individual.
You might argue that this would be very difficult to manage, but we all have an NHS number? Now in the music industry there is something called an IRSC code that is embedded into individual published music tracks. This enables an organisation called PRS in the UK (there are equivalents in other countries) to track how often a musician’s piece of music is being played and to charge a royalty that goes back to the musician every few months. There isn’t a reason why something similar couldn’t also work in social care or health. Each time AI or another form of digital technology were to access an individual’s care and treatment record, a fee could be collected. In other words a form of streaming or digital income for individual people who draw on support, care and treatment. A similar model could be applied to content that Social Care and Health organisations publish digitally.
This may sound absolutely bonkers, but my thinking is that the tech bros would not be putting so much time and money into artificial intelligence if they did not believe it would make significant profits for themselves. So if they’re going to make significant profits out of social care and health, that income needs to be shared with people who draw on care support or are getting treatment, the workforce and social care and health organisations.
I understand that it’s probably not quite as simple as this. But if we don’t acknowledge that the key driver behind digital technology and artificial intelligence is to make money for the few, many of us working in or using social care and health support are going to find ourselves much, much poorer. Particularly when the tech bros start recharging us for using our own content.
I am absolutely in favour of technological approaches and the use of artificial intelligence in health and social care. I just want to make sure that we all profit from it. Not just a few at the expense of the many.
What I’m saying is that everybody in social care and health need to see a return on their investment in the tech bros work.
Jim Thomas
June 2025
Dissecting the Digital Dollar, Music Managers Forum, 2015 – 2025
AI needs You: How we Can Change AI’s Future and Save our Own, Verity Harding, 2024
Careless People, Sarah Whynn-William, 2025
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