The theme of this year’s World Intellectual Property Day on 26 April 2025 is ‘IP and music: Feel the beat of IP’. In this interview, Andreas Christen, musician and co-founder of the band Dabu Fantastic, describes the issues that Swiss musicians are currently confronted with.
The aim of the World IP Day, which was launched in 2000 by the member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), is to create a better understanding of intellectual property (IP) in general. The focus is on creators, entrepreneurs and inventors. The IPI is taking this year’s edition as an opportunity to ask musicians in Switzerland about IP in their creative work and how they ‘feel the beat’ of intellectual property.
We interviewed Andreas Christen, a musician, co-founder and manager of the band Dabu Fantastic. He’s also an IP lawyer and a member of the Pop/Rock Advisory Board of the SONART association, which promotes the interests of the industry.
IPI: What drives your creativity? What motivates you to be creative and to create music?
Andreas Christen: The magic of being able to create something from literally nothing that deeply touches me and many other people. Feeling that in the studio, and especially when playing a concert, is fulfilling, blissful and addictive at the same time.
What do you currently see as your biggest challenges?
Earning enough money in the music and creative industry to secure a fair and good income for ourselves, but also for all our employees and freelancers. There’s basically enough money, but a large proportion goes to the major labels and tech companies such as Meta, Apple and Spotify. It’s sometimes quite difficult not to despair when you’re tilting at windmills.
What role does IP play in your daily work and in the creation of new music?
If it weren’t for IP (in our case mainly copyright), we wouldn’t have the slightest chance of earning enough money from our music. Firstly, the right of exclusivity ensures that nobody can simply copy our music and, secondly, the royalties, which in our case are distributed by the collective management organisations SUISA, Swissperform, SIG and suissimage, make up a significant proportion of our income. In terms of the act of creating music, however, it usually doesn’t play a role – you just let your thoughts run free.
Are there any challenges you face in managing and enforcing your IP rights?
It can be very difficult to check whether all uses of our music have actually been billed correctly. Firstly, this is almost impossible due to the complexity of the calculation systems, for example in the case of related rights. Secondly, there’s a lot of data that has to be archived in detail and then compared with the evaluation reports months or years later, for example in the case of remuneration for music played live.
How do you see the future of IP in the music industry, particularly with regard to innovations and changes brought about by new technologies, such as generative AI?
Intellectual property is still an insurance policy for musicians, even in a time when AI companies are operating inconsiderately and without regard for the law. However, if we don’t enforce the existing and clear legal situation in favour of musicians worldwide quickly enough, we’ll be left behind. Then some megalomaniac ‘tech bros’ from Silicon Valley will earn an indecent amount of money from AI models that they’ve trained with our works without having paid a single franc for them.
About the interviewee
Andreas Christen is a musician, co-founder and manager of the band Dabu Fantastic and a lawyer for intellectual property. He is a member of the pop/rock Advisory Board of the professional association Sonart and has been active in the music industry since 2008.
