The future of music was heard two years ago when BBL Drizzy, an infectious hit caught the ear, informing listeners that artificial intelligence was here to stay.
Then came the lawsuits as the three big labels — Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group (WMG) — sued AI companies Udio and Suno for copyright infringement.
Now comes the embrace as WMG and Suno have agreed to settle their lawsuit, favouring a new partnership for creating music.
The news comes a week after WMG, whose artiste roster includes Dua Lipa and Charli XCX, resolved its copyright lawsuit with Udio. UMG and Udio, too, have settled their legal battle by chalking a deal for a fully-licensed AI music platform.
As the year comes to an end, the music industry and AI startups appear to be largely aligning on a monetizable path forward.
Last week, Bloomberg reported that the music startup Klay became the first AI music company to have struck deals with all three major labels. The company is reportedly working on a streaming service that would allow users to remix existing songs in different styles, using a model that is trained on thousands of licensed songs.
Warner Records, in a statement, highlighted positive notes about the startup: “Klay is not a prompt-based meme generation engine designed to supplant human artistes. Rather, it is an entirely new subscription product that will uplift great artistes and celebrate their craft…. Within Klay’s system, fans can mould their musical journeys in new ways while ensuring participating artists and songwriters are properly recognised and rewarded.”
Suno, which allows users to key in prompts for songs, has been gaining traction among users. The company recently announced that nearly 100 million people have used the service to create music over the past two years. In November, Suno announced that it raised $250 million at a valuation of $2.45 billion.
The company said higher-quality music-creation models are on the way, trained on licensed music but it is unclear whether artistes will be allowed to opt out of inclusion in that training data.
WMG CEO Robert Kyncl said: “AI becomes pro-artiste when it adheres to our principles: Committing to licenced models, reflecting the value of music on and off platform, and providing artistes and songwriters with an opt-in for the use of their name, image, likeness, voice and compositions in new AI songs.”
While Udio’s deal with music groups stops users from downloading their creations from the platform, Suno reached more favourable terms with WMG: Downloads will continue for paid users, subject to a limit to be announced.
Both UMG and Sony are still in litigation with Suno as of this article’s publication, and Sony is still suing both companies.
AI-generated tracks are creating difficulties for the music ecosystem. Spotify said in September that it had pulled 75 million “spammy” tracks in the previous 12 months alone. One of the tracks that was removed is I Run by an unknown artiste HAVEN, which went viral on social media. Ultimately, the track was reuploaded, this time using human vocals rather than Suno-processed Jorja Smith soundalike.