Success of AI music creators sparks debate on future of industry

LONDON (AP):

When pop groups and rock bands practise or perform, they rely on their guitars, keyboards and drumsticks to make music. Oliver McCann, a British AI music creator who goes by the stage name imoliver, fires up his chatbot.

McCann’s songs span a range of genres, from indie-pop to electro-soul to country-rap. There’s just one crucial difference between McCann and traditional musicians.

“I have no musical talent,” he said. “I can’t sing, I can’t play instruments, and I have no musical background.”

McCann, 37, who has a background as a visual designer, started experimenting with AI to see if it could boost his creativity. In July, he signed with independent record label Hallwood Media after one of his tracks racked up three million streams. It’s the first time a music label has inked a contract with an AI music creator.

McCann is an example of how ChatGPT-style AI song generation tools like Suno and Udio have spawned a wave of synthetic music. A movement most notably highlighted by a fictitious group, Velvet Sundown, that went viral even though all its songs, lyrics and album art were created by AI.

Experts say generative AI is set to transform the music world. However, there are scant details, so far, on how it’s impacting the $29.6 billion global recorded music market, which includes about $20 billion from streaming.

The most reliable figures come from music streaming service, Deezer, which estimates that 18 per cent of songs uploaded to its platform every day are purely AI-generated. Other bigger streaming platforms like Spotify haven’t released any figures on AI music. Udio declined to comment on how many users it has and how many songs it has generated. Suno did not respond to a request for comment.

Josh Antonuccio, director of Ohio University’s School of Media Arts and Studies, said that the amount of AI-generated music “is just going to only exponentially increase” as young people grow up with AI and become more comfortable with it.

“Just think about what it used to cost to make a hit or make something that breaks,” Antonuccio said. “And that just keeps winnowing down from a major studio to a laptop to a bedroom. And now it’s like a text prompt — several text prompts.”

THREAT

Generative AI, with its ability to spit out seemingly unique content, has divided the music world, with musicians and industry groups complaining that recorded works are being exploited to train AI models that power song-generation tools.

Record labels are trying to fend off the threat that AI music start-ups pose to their revenue streams, even as they hope to tap into it for new earnings. Recording artistes worry that it will devalue their creativity.

Three major record companies, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Records, filed lawsuits last year against Suno and Udio for copyright infringement. In June, the two sides also reportedly entered negotiations that could go beyond settling the lawsuits and set rules for how artistes are paid when AI is used to remix their songs.

GEMA, a German royalty collection society, has sued Suno, accusing it of generating music similar to songs like Mambo No. 5 by Lou Bega and Forever Young by Alphaville.

More than 1,000 musicians, including Kate Bush and Annie Lennox, released a silent album to protest proposed changes to UK laws on AI they fear would erode their creative control. Meanwhile, other artistes, such as will.i.am, Timbaland and Imogen Heap, have embraced the technology.

Some users say the debate is just a rehash of old arguments about once-new technology that eventually became widely used, such as AutoTune, drum machines and synthesisers.