Official Statement on the Authorship of
"Hawak Mo Ang Beat"

In One Paragraph

Our Position

"Hawak Mo Ang Beat" is an original musical work — composition, lyrics, and sound recording — created by Sylvain Amazir Hernandez (DJ Mogo) together with his wife, and completed in his Tacloban City studio on November 21, 2025, using FL Studio 25. No part of the composition, the lyrics, or the vocal was generated by artificial intelligence. The work is registered with the Philippine copyright authorities under the certificate numbers published below. Before Decibels Island had commercially released the work, an AI-generated imitation of it appeared on a third-party channel; that event is the origin of the public confusion this page addresses.

The Documented Sequence

Timeline of the Work

• 2025 — Creation The track took shape over an extended writing and production process in Tacloban City. As recounted in our national television interviews, the song began with melodic ideas drawn from the cha-cha tradition of Leyte and the heavy drum language of budots — and its earliest lyric drafts were written in French, before the Tagalog lyric was completed with the involvement of Hernandez's Filipina wife. An imitator generating a copy of a finished song does not inherit a months-long creative ancestry in another language; we do.
• November 21, 2025 — Completion The master recording, lead sheet, and lyrics were finalized in FL Studio 25. The complete production archive — project files, stems, and export history bearing their original timestamps — has been preserved intact, and portions of it have already been shown to members of the press.
• Early December 2025 — The Unauthorized Copy Before Decibels Island had commercially released the work, an AI-generated imitation of the then-unreleased song was uploaded to a third-party video channel, accompanied by claims of AI authorship. How unreleased material came to be imitated in that window is a question we have raised formally; we will not litigate it on this page.
• February 15, 2026 — Discovery and Official Release Upon discovering the unauthorized copy circulating online, Decibels Island moved the original work into immediate official distribution across all major platforms, and initiated formal rights enforcement.
• March 2026 — National Spotlight The song became one of the country's defining dance crazes. DJ Mogo presented the work, its creative origins, and his authorship on Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho (March 22 episode) and in a 24 Oras report by GMA News, with further coverage on TV5 and Abante Radyo.
• 2026 — Enforcement Outcomes Following formal takedown procedures, the unauthorized commercial distributions of the imitation were removed from Spotify, Apple Music, and all commercial stores. In the other direction, repeated takedown attempts aimed at Decibels Island's official releases all failed — and ceased entirely after our legal counsel issued a formal cease-and-desist letter challenging the human involvement and authorship behind those claims. Every official Decibels Island release remains live, distributed, and monetized on every major platform.

On the Record

Copyright Registrations

The work is registered with the copyright authorities of the Republic of the Philippines. We publish the certificate numbers so that any rights body, platform, distributor, or accredited journalist can verify them upon legitimate request:

The lyrics are likewise deposited with the National Library of the Philippines, and the work is registered with FILSCAP for the administration of performing rights. Under Philippine law and the Berne Convention, copyright protection arises from the act of creation itself; these registrations document and reinforce rights that existed from the moment the work was made.

Addressing the Speculation

On the Question of AI

No part of "Hawak Mo Ang Beat" — not the composition, not the lyrics, not the vocal — was generated by artificial intelligence. The work was produced by human hands in FL Studio 25, through the legacy sequencing workflow that defines the Decibels Island sound.

On the vocal, which has drawn the most speculation: the voice on the record is the product of a deliberately complex, multi-stage vocal tuning and processing chain — a production aesthetic, chosen and engineered, not a generation. Heavy vocal processing has been a creative tool of electronic music for decades; a processed voice is not a synthetic author.

We note the irony at the center of this controversy: the only party to have publicly claimed AI authorship of this song is the party whose copy we had removed from commercial platforms. Decibels Island has never claimed AI made this work — because it didn't.

Closing

What Matters Now

We did not seek this controversy, and we do not intend to feed it. We name no names on this page and will not. The registrations stand, the archive stands, the enforcement record stands — and the song belongs to the millions of Filipinos who danced to it. That was always the point.

For press and interview requests: contact@db-island.com · For rights and verification matters: legal@db-island.com

— Sylvain Amazir Hernandez, "DJ Mogo"
Founder, Decibels Island