A six-year-old Stick Figure song shot to number one on iTunes in six countries after a flood of unauthorised, AI-generated remixes sent streams soaring, but the band says it's receiving no royalties. The California-based reggae group and its label, Ineffable Records, spent the week issuing copyright takedown notices and contacting platforms and uploaders as multiple robotic sounding versions went viral. The surge pushed the track to the top of charts in the United Kingdom, Austria and Canada, yet most plays were of versions the band says it didn't authorise. This label and band continue to press streaming services and individual uploaders to remove or correctly credit the remixes.

Stick Figure expected, at most, a modest revival when a six-year-old song began attracting attention. Instead, "Angels Above Me" climbed to the number one slot on iTunes sales charts in six countries, a spike the band now says was driven largely by unauthorised remixes created with artificial intelligence.

From surprise spike to rights fight

Scott Woodruff, Stick Figure's lead vocalist and guitarist, said the initial spike felt exciting before the mood shifted. "It was saddening," he told reporters, after learning the attention came from AI-spun remixes rather than renewed interest in the original recording. Woodruff and his team identified roughly four different versions that were going viral at the height of the surge, and one AI-tinged remix attracted about 1.8 million YouTube plays in five days before the video was removed.

The band has been active for around 20 years and has released eight albums. They have enjoyed chart success before, Woodruff said, but the speed and scale of this week’s spike were like nothing they had seen. The recordings that were drawing the biggest audiences, he and the label maintain, were not versions they had authorised and didn't channel royalties back to the band.

Ineffable Records, which manages Stick Figure's catalogue, described the week as a frantic exercise in content removal. Adam Gross, the label president, called the experience "a game of whack-a-mole" as teams filed takedown notices, sent direct messages to uploaders and made formal requests to platform operators. The label reported mixed results.

Spotify removed all tracks it was asked to take down, and a particularly viral YouTube upload was taken down after contact from the band’s team, but other remixes remained live even after outreach.

Not every uploader agreed the material was unauthorised. In one case an account holder described their upload as a cover and offered to split royalties. The band and label said those uploads didn't properly credit or compensate Stick Figure, and that the income from the most active streams was not reaching the group.

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An industry problem, not an isolated glitch

Those events mirror a broader trend noted in the reporting. Deezer provided figures indicating detected AI-generated songs rose from 18 percent of daily uploads in 2025 to 44 percent in 2026. Deezer estimated the 44 percent figure equates to more than two million tracks a month, and the company said it views about 85 percent of those AI-flagged tracks as fraudulent or intended to siphon royalties.

Commercial tools that let non-experts produce quick remixes and stylistic copies have become widely available. That means individuals can churn out ersatz versions at scale, and platforms are now flooded with audio that mimics existing artists while bypassing traditional licensing routes. The reporting links this wave to earlier eras of unauthorised mashups and covers, but points to the current leap in scale and speed made possible by AI tools.

For artists and labels, the immediate consequence is both practical and financial. Takedown requests and direct outreach remain the main responses, but they're labour intensive and only intermittently successful. Gross said his team had to prioritise the largest offending uploads, both to limit the damage and to keep up with fresh copies appearing across services and accounts.

Platforms have responded in different ways. As noted, Spotify complied with the label’s removal requests in this case, and YouTube took down at least one viral upload. Other services left content online, either because the uploads were presented as covers or because the platform’s review processes didn't immediately flag the material as infringing. The reporting doesn't provide platform-side technical detail on how the remixes were generated, nor does it present precise royalty-accounting figures. Claims about lost revenue and the provenance of the remixes therefore rest on the band’s and label’s statements rather than forensic audio analysis published in these accounts.

Woodruff and Gross have framed the problem in practical terms. The band wants its catalogue and its fans linked to the original recordings, and more immediately it wants to be paid for the plays that are being counted. They say, the most active streams are delivering plays and chart positions, but not income to the people who made the song.

The episode has wider implications for how recorded music is discovered and monetised. When unauthorised AI versions can outsell authorised tracks, the mechanisms that track plays, allocate royalties and determine chart positions are tested in new ways. For smaller acts that rely on touring and recorded-music income, there's a real economic incentive to push platforms for better verification and attribution, or for clearer policy and enforcement around AI-derived uploads.

For now, Stick Figure and Ineffable Records are pursuing the route available to them. They continued through the week to file takedown notices and to contact uploaders directly. The band’s team says it's not collecting royalties from the most active streams of the remixes while it works to get the content removed or properly credited.

The situation raises practical questions about how rights holders, platforms and the technical tools behind AI-generated audio will adapt. Those conversations are ongoing across the industry, and for Stick Figure the immediate test is to stop the unauthorised versions from dominating listening figures long enough to recover correct credit and payment.

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One AI-tinged remix logged roughly 1.8 million YouTube plays in five days before removal, and the band and label continue to press platforms and uploaders to remove other copies or credit the group correctly.

This article was created with AI assistance.