AI is flowing into the music industry at an unprecedented pace, and the rich people in charge are cheering it on. Last month the three major labels, Universal, Sony, and Warner, struck a deal with the AI-generated music platform Klay allowing the company’s models to be legally trained on the music in their catalogs. Eurythmics co-founder Dave Stewart is all for it, but he believes the artists should be the ones striking these deals on their own behalf.
Alongside entrepreneurs Dom Joseph and Rich Britton, Stewart just launched Rare, a sort of incubator that seeks to help creatives develop projects and then take a cut of their profits from the work. Rare is allegedly in the business of crafting Rare Entities, “extraordinary ventures in culture & experience,” the kind of corporate speak you expect from someone with Stewart’s taste in hats. Here’s how the business is described on its website:
Rare brings together outstanding IP, elite talent, creativity and expert operations to turn bold ideas into living entities that shift the landscape. We build ecosystems where creativity drives real momentum and where new cultural value can form.
Rare exists to do more than rebalance power. We exist to develop Entities and Originals that break the norms entirely. We explore new formats, create platforms that open new value, and experiences that reshape how culture is made and felt. And at the centre of every entity, creators and IP owners stay in control.
Rare Entities are not stumbled upon; they are conjured, shaped, and crafted into being. Rare courage is choosing to build what does not yet exist and leaning into the unknown because the idea demands it. Rare vision is sensing what culture will crave tomorrow and laying the foundations today. And Rare instinct cannot be taught. It lives in the bloodstream, rises in the late-night rhythm, and becomes the pulse you trust when nothing else is certain.
In an interview with the Guardian promoting Rare, Stewart called generative AI an “unstoppable force” and argued that artists’ music is going to end up absorbed into this world anyway, so they might as well get paid for it. “Everybody should be selling or licensing their voice and their skills to these companies,” Stewart said. “Otherwise they’re just going to take it anyway.”
The ongoing lawsuit on behalf of Jorja Smith underlines Stewart’s point. Smith’s record label FAMM is suing the creators of the viral AI-created hit “I Run” by HAVEN., which the label claims was trained on Smith’s vocals without permission.
In the interview, Stewart compares generative AI to the drum machines he and Annie Lennox used in Eurythmics, a new technology that, in the right hands, can be used to augment and empower human creativity rather than replace it. What about in the wrong hands, though? Aren’t those the exact hands he’s saying musicians should strike a deal with?
