Why we built provenance in from day one

When we started, provenance was going to be a nice-to-have in a settings menu. Then it became obvious it was the whole product.

The question every AI song gets asked

A song made with AI raises a fair question: what did the person actually do? The honest answer is usually a lot. They brought the idea. They picked the songs it should sound like. They rewrote the chorus three times, threw out two takes, and chose the master. But if none of that is written down, it's a story, not a record.

So we write it down

Dugatto keeps a timeline as you work, with the date and time on every entry. The note you started from. What the AI drafted. Every line you changed and every version you saved. The take you picked and the master you approved. It's built as you go, not reconstructed later, which is the only kind of record worth having.

And we sign it

A log you could quietly edit isn't worth much. So Dugatto signs each record with its own key, and anyone you hand the export to can check that it hasn't been touched since. Impresario members can export the whole thing, with the hashes of every file and an independent timestamp, as one document to put on the table.

“The rules for who owns an AI-assisted song are still being written. Whatever they turn out to be, the person with the record is in a better position than the person with a memory.”

Provenance stays out of your way while you're making the song. It's the last tab, not the first. But it's there the whole time.