RIAA doesn't like it, but my introduction to a video game series I've since spent hundreds of dollars on over the years, came from running across one of its soundtrack pieces on Youtube.

There's a reason companies talk about "customer acquistion cost", as you generally need to pay to market your products to potential customers of them.

So free marketing can be a real cost reduction. It may not be enough to be a benefit compared to the cost of piracy, but it's hardly a made-up defense.

I don't know about legally, but practically speaking people downloading MP3s could decrease an artists sales but chatgpt talking about their lyrics realistically can't.

It is (was) a commonly used defense. It might not hold much weight legally, so its applicability depends upon whether one is interested in the letter of the law or interested in the wellbeing of the recording artists.

Yeah once you have the lyrics, why would you waste time listening to the song? You might as well get chat gpt to summarise the lyrics into a few bullet points and save you the time of even reading them!