Imagine Dragons

Imagine Dragons formed in Las Vegas in 2008 around frontman Dan Reynolds and became the defining rock act of the streaming era: “Radioactive” set a then-record 87 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 and won a Grammy, while “Believer,” “Thunder” and “Demons” pushed the band past tens of billions of streams — routinely ranking them among the most-played rock artists on Spotify.

Signing the ARA letter

In April 2024, the band joined more than 200 artists — including Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry and Pearl Jam — in signing the Artist Rights Alliance open letter, which called on AI developers, technology companies, platforms and digital music services to “cease the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to infringe upon and devalue the rights of human artists” and to pledge not to deploy AI music-generation tools that undermine or replace human artistry or deny artists fair compensation.

The letter’s core grievances were unlicensed training on artists’ work, AI voice cloning, and the dilution of streaming royalty pools by machine-generated sound — a direct concern for a band whose commercial life is built on streaming economics more than any legacy rock act.

There is irony in the fine print: few bands owe more to algorithmic platforms than Imagine Dragons, and the letter they signed takes pains to bless AI “used responsibly” as having enormous creative potential. Their objection, like the coalition’s, is to exploitation without consent or pay — not to technology itself.