The Rick Beato Debate: A Signal for the Future of Intellectual Property

By: George Karalexis & Donna Budica

At its core, TEN2 Media is a rights management company. One of our most important responsibilities and the reason we've garnered such trust from our partners and clients is our ethos around protecting and enforcing their IP rights.

We are music people first.

That responsibility isn’t always black and white. As UGC becomes one of the most powerful drivers of music discovery and exposure, we have to constantly rethink how we approach enforcement. The challenge is making sure we’re defending value while also enabling “value add” from creators, people whose work expands awareness, builds community, and ultimately strengthens catalog that we actively protect.

The recent clash between Universal Music Group (UMG) and Rick Beato is a critical signal of a widening gap - HERE is more information if you are unaware.

As founders of TEN2 Media, we navigate this tension daily and see both sides. The issue is that our current systems were bred to deem these as opposing forces rather than symbiotic. At the very least, we need to approach this as a conversation (not combat) and rethink intellectual property for a world where every creator is a creative, every platform is an opportunity to amplify, and every use case has potential to be transformative.

"IP laws were originally designed to build fences, but value is created by building bridges. We need a system that can tell the difference."

The Rights Holder’s Imperative

Rights holders like UMG are stewards of legacy and catalog, designed to steadfastly protect any and all revenue streams. Automated enforcement tools have become essential in a world with billions of uploads annually. At the same time, rights holders are hiring influencers to generate content and hope for virality. While this can drive engagement, it does not replace the value of creators who organically produce additive content.

Mandate: Rights holders act as stewards of creativity, ensuring that artists are compensated and that unauthorized uses do not erode long-term value.
Tools: Automated enforcement such as YouTube’s Content ID is a rational response to scale. Manual review is impossible at billions of uploads per year.
Risk of inaction: Without enforcement, piracy and unlicensed exploitation could proliferate, undermining both revenue and artist trust.

The Creator’s Reality

Creators like Rick Beato represent a new category in the ecosystem. Their work is additive, not a substitute, and often revives interest in legacy catalogues that foster music literacy. There is an institutional failure to differentiate between infringement and educational or transformative work.

New role: Creators serve as educators, critics, and cultural translators whose work adds value to the original content.
Contribution: They expand awareness, foster music literacy, and often revive catalog interest. In practice, they act as marketing partners, not competitors.
Tension: Nuance is lost in the current system. It treats all unlicensed use equally, whether bootleg or brilliantly educational.

Structural Fractures: Why is Law & Culture So Divergent?

Copyright frameworks were written for a pre-digital world and struggle to accommodate today’s content ecosystem. Platforms are global, content is instantly remixable, and the pace of cultural consumption far exceeds the capabilities of enforcement tools.

Outdated frameworks: The DMCA, enacted in 1998, predates YouTube, TikTok, and AI music. Its binary framing of infringement vs NOT fails to account for complexities.
Cultural liquidity: Content in 2025 is global, remixable, and instantly distributable. Enforcement systems designed for fixed works cannot keep pace.

A More Adaptive IP Architecture

The future of intellectual property requires balancing protection with participation. Rights holders must rethink enforcement and economic models while treating transformative creators as collaborators. This approach recognizes the value of organic content that is not prompted or commissioned yet drives awareness and engagement.

Smarter enforcement systems: Distinguish piracy from education, critique, or transformative use. Introduce thresholds or trusted creator designations for proven non-infringing actors.
Cultural partnerships: Reframe creators as allies in cultural longevity. Build collaboration frameworks where rights holders and creators expand, rather than restrict, cultural relevance. There are many companies and third-party organizations doing this, but it needs to be a universally adopted ethos.

Implications for the Industry

Rights holders, creators, and platforms are all navigating this new landscape. Enforcement alone is not enough; reputational awareness and nuanced collaboration are equally critical. Platforms have the opportunity to mediate between rights holders and creators, fostering innovation while protecting value.

For rights holders: Enforcement must remain rigorous but reputation aware. Blunt takedowns risk alienating communities and diminishing goodwill.
For creators: Advocacy for fair use will intensify. Creators must also recognize that rights holders are defending artist livelihoods, not simply restricting creativity.
For platforms: The greatest opportunity lies in mediating the middle ground, developing smarter tools that reduce conflict while enabling revenue for all stakeholders.

The UMG Rick Beato debate is not about winners or losers. It is a signal of a larger shift: intellectual property is moving from a defensive tool to a collaborative framework. Ownership remains central, but its function must adapt to an era defined by platform ubiquity, creator empowerment, and cultural fluidity. This is something we think about on a daily basis as we continue to update and iterate our position on how we approach rights management.