SGAE's Cristina Perpiñá-Robert tells Billboard Latin Music Week 2026 that AI replacing creators worries Spain more than licensing

Cristina Perpiñá-Robert runs SGAE, the society that collects royalties for Spain’s songwriters and composers. On Tuesday, October 20, she told an AI panel at Billboard Latin Music Week in Miami Beach what worries Spain most: “Our biggest concern is not so much the licensing process. It’s the fact that the content which is generated with AI is completely replacing human creators.”

Her society has a number behind that worry. An SGAE study of 1,257 Spanish music creators, published in September 2025, estimates AI could cut music royalty income by up to 28% by 2028. That’s about €100 million in 2028 alone.

What SGAE’s Cristina Perpiñá-Robert said about AI at Billboard Latin Music Week 2026

Tatiana Cirisano, VP of music strategy at MIDiA Research, moderated the session, with lawyer Pierre Hachar Jr. next to Perpiñá-Robert. Billboard’s Natalia Cano reported the exchange on October 21.

Perpiñá-Robert has been SGAE’s director general since 2023, and Billboard named her one of its Women in Music in 2025. On stage she also said that “creators and music creators we’re seeing in Spain, they are using AI.” Spain’s concern, she said, is that regulation “is not enough”, because creators and authors are being “completely excluded” from the business model.

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It's not only how to license the model, it's how to prevent creators from not being hired anymore because you can just resort to synthetic music.

Across the couch, Hachar Jr. described the same reality from his clients’ side.

Why Pierre Hachar Jr. says most of his clients already use AI

Hachar Jr., managing partner of The Hachar Law Group, said most of the people he represents already use AI: “Whether they wanna admit it or not, they’re using AI.”

He compared AI to streaming, and to Pro Tools, Reason, Logic and FL Studio, which all met resistance before they became normal. “[Many said:] ‘Oh, it’s the end of the musician!’ Well, no, it’s the start of a whole new group of people that can explore creativity, right? And that’s the way I see AI,” he said.

SGAE’s own survey backs Hachar Jr. on usage. 34% of the Spanish creators it asked had already used AI tools, and another 17% planned to, with Suno, BandLab and LANDR among the tools named. The same survey found 26% worried about machines gradually replacing human work.

So both panelists agree creators use AI. Perpiñá-Robert’s worry is what happens to the paid work around them.

What SGAE’s split between licensing and replacement means for your registered songs

A training licence pays you when your song goes into a model. It pays nothing when a client picks a generator over hiring you, and that second case is the one Perpiñá-Robert put first.

The licence half is the one societies already chase. In December 2024, SGAE backed a draft Spanish decree that would have let societies license their whole repertoire for AI training in one deal, with an opt-out for authors. The culture ministry withdrew it in late January 2025 after authors’ groups pushed back.

GEMA has since won in Munich against Suno, while a University of Florida professor argued in September that Latin catalogue sits in training sets with no licensing money coming back.

The creators in SGAE’s study asked for rules that separate AI-assisted music from fully artificial music. I couldn’t find a published SGAE registration rule for AI-assisted works yet. ASCAP, BMI and SOCAN accept AI-assisted songs that carry human authorship, and Korea’s KOMCA pulled its AI registration rules after 22 days while still keeping fully AI works out.

Every one of those rules turns on the human contribution. So if you write with AI and register with any society, your lyric drafts, voice memos and session files are the proof of your part.

A licence can pay for what went into the model. The replacement question is the one SGAE now wants regulators to answer.