AI
ai
LATEST ARTICLES

iHeartRadio Bans AI Music

Billboard
Jason Tate

Billboard:

iHeartRadio’s chief programming officer and president, Tom Poleman, sent a letter to staff on Friday (Nov. 21), obtained by Billboard, pledging that the company doesn’t and won’t “use AI-generated personalities” or “play AI music that features synthetic vocalists pretending to be human,” among other promises.

The pledge marks the beginning of iHeart’s new “Guaranteed Human” program, which will also see the company publish only “Guaranteed Human” podcasts, according to Poleman’s letter.

Universal, Warner, and Sony Strike Licensing Deals With AI Music Startup

AI
Jason Tate

Variety:

For the first time, all three of the major labels – Universal Music Group, Sony Music and Warner Music Group, along with their respective publishing arms – have struck individual licensing deals with the same artificial intelligence-focused music startup: Klay.

I don’t even have anything snarky to say. I find all of this so much more soulless than the most generic copycat awful neon-era scene music.

Suno Now Valued at $2.45 Billion

AI
Jason Tate

Suno, the AI music company, has raised a $250 million dollars and is now valued at $2.45 billion.

Instead, Suno more than doubled the predicted tranche and tacked on another $450 million to the post-cash valuation. Menlo Ventures led the sizable Series C, which drew additional support from NVIDIA’s NVentures, Hallwood Media (the professional home of Xania Monet), Anthropic stakeholder Lightspeed, and Palo Alto’s Matrix.

Addressing the raise, Suno co-founder and head Mikey Shulman, whose platform is said to be approaching 100 million total users, described his company as having a hand in “the future of music.”

Survey Says Users Want AI-Music Disclosure

AI
Jason Tate

Reuters:

The study found that 73% of respondents supported disclosure when AI-generated tracks are recommended, 45% sought filtering options, and 40% said they would skip AI-generated songs entirely. Around 71% expressed surprise at their inability to distinguish between human-made and synthetic tracks. Deezer, which has 9.7 million subscribers, has seen daily AI music submissions rise to more than 50,000 — about a third of total uploads, up sharply from 18% in April. 

AI-Generated Country Artists Climbing Charts

AI
Jason Tate

Digital Music News:

This week, Breaking Rust landed the top spot on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart for the second week in a row with the song “Walk My Walk.” But Breaking Rust is not a real person or a real band. It’s an AI project credited to songwriter Aubierre Rivaldo Taylor, but the mysterious “artist” has over 2 million monthly listeners on Spotify.

Another AI-generated country singer, Cain Walker, also dominated the Country Digital Song Sales chart this week with tracks in the third, ninth, and eleventh spots. Billboard distinguishes both Walker and Breaking Rust’s music as “virtual acts,” which offers some degree of transparency that the artists and/or the art is AI generated.

We really don’t have to do this.

AI Artist Getting Spins on US Radio Stations

AI
Jason Tate

Ashley King, writing for Digital Music News:

If you thought only streaming platforms were feeling the onslaught of artificial intelligence-created (AI) artists and generated music, think again. Even radio stations aren’t safe from the budding industry of AI-generated content. According to Billboard, an AI singer called Xania Monet has become the first known AI artist to earn enough radio airplay to debut on a Billboard radio chart.

You know, we don’t have to do this…

AI “Artist” Signs Million-Dollar Record Deal

AI
Jason Tate

Billboard:

Monet is actually an AI-powered creation of a Mississippi woman named Telisha Jones, who writes her own lyrics but uses the AI platform Suno to make them into music.

The deal inked by Jones — a multimillion-dollar agreement signed by ex-Interscope exec Neil Jacobson’s indie music company Hallwood Media — marks the latest advance of AI into every corner of American life. But the buzz surrounding the deal, which some of the major labels ultimately backed away from, highlights the legal limbo that music companies and creators face as they adopt the new tech. 

Will Smith’s Concert Crowds, AI, and Where We’re Headed

Will Smith
Jason Tate

Andy Baio has the best break down of the Will Smith AI(?)-crowd controversy I’ve seen:

This minute-long clip of a Will Smith concert is blowing up online for all the wrong reasons, with people accusing him of using AI to generate fake crowds filled with fake fans carrying fake signs. The story’s blown up a bit, with coverage in Rolling Stone, NME, The Independent, and Consequence of Sound.

[…]

But here’s where things get complicated.

The crowds are real. Every person you see in the video above started out as real footage of real fans, pulled from video of multiple Will Smith concerts during his recent European tour.

YouTube Altering Videos With AI

YouTube
Jason Tate

Ashley King, writing for Digital Music News:

YouTube reveals [they’re] using artificial intelligence to make video enhancements to content on its platform without first informing content creators. Confirmed to be applied to a subset of YouTube Shorts, the undisclosed changes have left some creators feeling unsettled about how their work is being used. It also raises questions about the overall implications of undisclosed algorithmic mediation.

BPI Calls for AI Labels on Spotify and Other DSPs

AI
Jason Tate

Digital Music News:

“That’s why we’re calling on the UK government to protect copyright and introduce new transparency obligations for AI companies so that music rights can be licensed and enforced, as well as calling for the clear labelling of content solely generated by AI,” Jones indicated.

The latter adverb raises interesting questions about what an across-the-board labeling system would look like in practice. For obvious reasons, if they do incorporate AI, established artists probably won’t want their music labeled as such – hence the “solely” clarifier.

This seems like a no-brainer to me.

Probable ‘AI’ Artist Gaining Spotify Traction

Jason Tate

Digital Music News:

Has an AI “artist” topped 474,000 Spotify monthly listeners (and counting) in just weeks? It sure seems that way, and the development is raising new questions about machine-generated tracks’ streaming prevalence.

Word of that presumably AI-powered “band,” The Velvet Sundown, appears to have started circulating earlier this week on Reddit. There, multiple users said some of the relevant tracks had arrived in their Discover Weekly playlists.

🤮

Record Labels in Talks to License Music to AI Firms

AI
Jason Tate

Lucas Shaw, writing for Bloomberg:

Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment are pushing to collect license fees for their work and also receive a small amount of equity in Suno and Udio, two leaders among a crop of companies that use generative AI to help make music. Any deal would help settle lawsuits between the two sides, said the people, who declined to be identified because the talks could fall apart.

AI Generated Music Is Hard for Humans to Detect

AI
Jason Tate

Deezer reports that around 18% of new tracks uploaded to their platform are AI generated:

“AI generated content continues to flood streaming platforms like Deezer, and we see no sign of it slowing down,” said Aurelien Herault, Chief Innovation Officer, Deezer. “Generative AI has the potential to positively impact music creation and consumption, but we need to approach the development with responsibility and care in order to safeguard the rights and revenues of artists and songwriters, while maintaining transparency for the fans. Thanks to our cutting-edge tool we are already removing fully AI generated content from the algorithmic recommendations.”

Meanwhile, a new study says humans aren’t great at detecting AI generated music:

“The average score was 46%,” O’Donnell reveals. “And for a few genres, especially instrumental ones, listeners were wrong more often than not.” O’Donnell says when he watched people take the test, he noticed that qualities they confidently flagged as AI compositions—fake-sounding instruments, weird lyrics—were not always right.

“Predictably, people did worse in genres they were less familiar with; some did okay on country or soul, but many stood no chance against jazz, classical piano, or pop. Beaty, the creativity researcher scored 66%, while Brandt, the composer, scored 50%.” With just a few text prompts, O’Donnell created music that humans couldn’t pick out of a line-up as AI generated. “A few could have been easily played at a party without raising objections, and I found two I genuinely loved, even as a lifelong musicians and generally picky music person,” he shares.

YouTube in Talks With Record Labels Over AI Music Deal

YouTube
Jason Tate

Financial Times:

YouTube is in talks with record labels to license their songs for artificial intelligence tools that clone popular artists’ music, hoping to win over a sceptical industry with upfront payments. The Google-owned video site needs labels’ content to legally train AI song generators, as it prepares to launch new tools this year, according to three people familiar with the matter.  The company has recently offered lump sums of cash to the major labels — Sony, Warner and Universal — to try to convince more artists to allow their music to be used in training AI software, according to several people briefed on the talks. 

Explaining the RIAA’s Lawsuit Against AI Music Startups

Legal
Jason Tate

Devin Coldewey, writing for TechCrunch:

Like many AI companies, music generation startups Udio and Suno appear to have relied on unauthorized scrapes of copyrighted works in order to train their models. This is by their own and investors’ admission, as well as according to new lawsuits filed against them by music companies. If these suits go before a jury, the trial could be both a damaging exposé and a highly useful precedent for similarly sticky-fingered AI companies facing certain legal peril.

The lawsuits, filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), put us all in the uncomfortable position of rooting for the RIAA, which for decades has been the bogeyman of digital media. I myself have received nastygrams from them! The case is simply that clear.