The music industry is gearing up for a big change

Get ready to hear some wild drops at EDM festivals. Google and Universal Music, the music industry’s largest record company, have entered into talks to create a tool that would enable individual creators to legally use other artists’ melodies and voices in songs generated by AI, according to the Financial Times.

Warner Music, the third-largest music label, has also reportedly been talking to Google about a similar product.

And while discussions between the groups are in the early stages and don’t mean a deal or product launch is imminent, they’re aimed at addressing what’s become a growing problem for the music industry – people using AI to create and monetize convincing “deepfake” tracks, usually without the artists’ consent (though there are some exceptions).

For example:

• An AI-created song featuring the voices of Drake and The Weeknd called “Heart on My Sleeve” amassed 250,000+ Spotify streams and 15 million views on TikTok before being taken down for copyright infringement.
• Frank Sinatra’s voice has been used without permission on a version of Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise,” Johnny Cash’s on a remix of “Barbie Girl,” and the voices of Tupac and Biggie can be found in various songs on YouTube. And that’s just scratching the surface.

🤔 The Blueprint?... Though not created by Jay-Z (iykyk), there’s a blueprint for this type of licensing negotiation. In the early days of YouTube, users began adding popular songs as soundtracks to their videos – and after the platform and the music industry battled it out for a few years, a copyright system was established that now pays the music industry ~$6 billion/year.