It doesn’t matter if nobody actually wants AI music; the major labels are still going to push it on us. Reuters reports that Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music Group, the three currently extant major-label umbrella groups, have all negotiated a licensing deal with an AI music streaming startup called Klay. That means that Klay is the first AI music streaming service to come to deals with all three major labels, and the company now can now train its model on tens of thousands of recordings.
This deal has apparently been in the works for a while. In a press release last month, UMG described the deal as as a “pioneering commercial ethical foundational model for AI generated music that works in collaboration with the music industry and its creators.” The idea is that Klay will work as a regular Spotify-style streaming service, and it’ll also allow users to use AI to remake songs in different styles. The details of the deal aren’t public yet. One hopes that artists will have the opportunity to opt out of it, but we just don’t know yet.
As AI-generated music becomes more of a thing, there’s been a lot of legal action over the rights to the music that AI companies use to train their models. The Klay deal was reported yesterday, the same day that Warner settled its copyright infringement lawsuit against Udio, another AI music company. According to TechCrunch, the lawsuit ended when Warner and Udio reached a licensing deal. According to Warner, that will allow for “new revenue streams for artists and songwriters, while ensuring their work remains protected.”
The majors are reaching these deals with AI companies just as AI-generated tracks are starting to make chart inroads. Lately, there’s been a flurry of news stories about AI-generated songs topping various niche Billboard charts, but those smaller charts are often easy to game through bots and bulk purchases. The AI R&B singer Xania Monet, however, is getting actual airplay.
This week, chart-watchers have noted that “I Run,” an AI-generated dance-pop track credited to a nonexistent artist called HAVEN., does not appear on this week’s Billboard Hot 100 even though it reportedly earned enough chart points to make its debut. This led some to conclude that maybe Billboard has made an editorial decision to leave AI music off of its flagship chart. But as the extremely smart music-industry observer and former Elite Gymnastics mastermind Jaime Brooks points out on Twitter, it seems extremely unlikely that Billboard will continue to hold that line when major labels are the ones pushing AI-generated music.
Look, I don’t know. Go to a show and buy a T-shirt or something.
