magpie standard
AI licensing infrastructure for the creative industries.
AI companies need to prove what they've trained on. Your members need to be paid. There's no infrastructure connecting them.
Over $500 million in AI licensing deals have already been signed. Almost all of it has gone to large publishers and stock libraries. The hundreds of thousands of creators represented by rights organisations have been locked out entirely. Not because AI companies won't pay. Because there's been nowhere for them to go.
At the same time, your members are watching their work appear in AI outputs. They're asking their unions, their societies, their agencies: what's the plan?
Most rights organisations don't have the technology to offer AI licensing at scale. The window is narrowing. EU AI Act enforcement begins August 2026. The UK Government's statutory report landed 18th March - it stopped the opt-out preference but offered no legislative commitment, no enforcement timeline, no signal of what compliance looks like. Whilst hard-fought campaigns shift the landscape, they didn't give creators consent, control and compensation. Licensing deals are being signed - and almost all of it is going to organisations with the catalogue depth and legal resources to negotiate behind closed doors. Your members are not currently in that room.
The licensing market is forming now. The question is whether your organisation is in it.
The Problem
Your brand. Your members. Your pricing. Our infrastructure.
We deploy a platform configured for your organisation. Your members see your branding. AI companies see your catalogue. You frame the policies, the pricing, and the terms.
The platform enables:
Copyright, likeness, and performance rights registration
Granular permissions per work and per use case (e.g. training, research, digital twin, etc.)Multi-creator works registration, accreditation and distribution of license share (films, recordings, performances)
Opt-out and restricted is also built - not all creators want to license - but do want protection
AI companies browse verified catalogues, where they can self-serve, or negotiate with the rights organisation for bulk deals and subscriptions. They receive machine-readable compliance certificates proving exactly what was licensed, under what terms, for what period. Content delivery adapts to your existing infrastructure, not the other way around.
We built this on open standards. ISCC for content identification, RSL for machine-readable licensing terms (mentioned in the House of Lords report) and C2PA for content provenance.
Because if the infrastructure isn't interoperable, it isn't infrastructure.
The Solution
The UK Government's statutory report on copyright and AI may have paused the most contentious opt-out preference - but a ‘wait and see’ approach has already cost creators two years.
The House of Lords called it a clear and present danger to the creative economy. The gap between large publishers with the legal resources to negotiate directly and everyone else is not closing on its own.
The pressure isn't coming from one direction either - the European Parliament adopted the Voss report by a landslide - explicitly placing collective management organisations at the centre of any functioning licensing framework.
EU AI Act enforcement begins August 2026. Fines up to €15 million or 3% of global revenue.
Publicly available training data is running out. Epoch AI projects exhaustion of human-generated text data as early as 2026. AI companies need licensed, verified, human-made content. The free data era is ending.
Rights organisations that establish licensing infrastructure now will be positioned to capture their share of a market projected to reach $15 billion by 2033.
Rights organisations that move first will set the terms. Those that wait will inherit them.
Why Now
I'm not a techbro who discovered a market. I'm a creator who understands the problem.
I’m a published creative. I know what it means to create work and worry about what happens to it.
I've also led £25M+ transformation programmes, including security-cleared infrastructure in defence and digital delivery at the Met Office. I’m also a former academic (PFHEA), who understands IP and how important it is to have your work acknowledged.
I built Magpie Standard because creators need infrastructure, not just advocacy.
And I have the unusual combination of creative practice, technical delivery and the strategic acumen to make it happen.
WHO BUILT THIS
We’ve launched our ‘demo-lite’ environment - take a peek at what we’ve built
Working platform deployed on production infrastructure with dual environments and automated deployment pipeline.
Implements all seven building blocks of the ACCCT framework (CoSTAR, UKRI), ISCC fingerprinting and RSL integration live (C2PA available for live deployment)
UK rights organisations actively evaluating across visual arts, performing arts, fashion modelling, and music.
Founding Partner Programme open - book a demo call!
Trademark pending (UK00004343869).
current status
Not part of a rights organisation? Direct creator access is coming soon.
The same infrastructure that powers society-level licensing will be available to independent creators: register your work, set your terms, get paid when it's licensed for AI training. No middleman. No collective required.
The waitlist is open now. When direct access launches, you'll be first through the door!