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The music industry wants Apple Music & Spotify to block AI music training

AI services have been training on music hosted on streaming services like Apple Music, and Universal Music Group wants it to stop.

Most criticism of AI such as ChatGPT earning money off the back of unpaid creative people, has been focused on text. But now, according to the Financial Times, record labels are concerned about music.

Universal Music Group (UMG), responsible for around a third of the world's music, reportedly contacted streaming services in March 2023 concerning AI. The group told the streamers that AI systems have been trained by scraping lyrics and melodies from

"We have become aware that certain AI systems might have been trained on copyrighted content," said UMG's email to streamers, "without obtaining the required consents from, or paying compensation to, the rightsholders who own or produce the content."

UMG asked the streamers to block access to their music catalog for developers using it for training. "We will not hesitate to take steps to protect our rights and those of our artists," continued the group's email.

"We have a moral and commercial responsibility to our artists to work to prevent the unauthorised use of their music and to stop platforms from ingesting content that violates the rights of artists and other creators," a UMG spokesperson told the publication. "We expect our platform partners will want to prevent their services from being used in ways that harm artists."

"This next generation of technology poses significant issues," an unnamed source told the Financial Times. "Much of [generative AI] is trained on popular music."

"You could say: compose a song that has the lyrics to be like Taylor Swift, but the vocals to be in the style of Bruno Mars, but I want the theme to be more Harry Styles," continued the source. "The output you get is due to the fact the AI has been trained on those artists' intellectual property."

Generative AI systems require an enormous dataset called a Large Language Model (LLM). Google, for instance, reportedly trained a system called MusicLM with 280,000 hours of music.

Google has not released MusicLM publicly, though, as it found that 1% of the music it generated was identical to previous recordings.

The Financial Times says that Spotify declined to comment. Apple has not yet commented publicly, nor are we expecting it to respond to our queries on the matter.

Apple itself is reportedly working on creating music via AI. In 2022, it bought AI Music, a UK-based startup specializing in the field.



18 Comments

DAalseth 7 Years · 3129 comments

Good!
My nephew writes music for movies and TV. He’s very good at what he does and is paid well for it. But I can see a day when the studios tell him, “Yes your music is fantastic, but we can get good enough music from the AI composer for a few pennies.” At that point his career will be over and him, his wife, and their two kids will be out on the street.
This is the real cost of AI moving into the arts.

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sdw2001 24 Years · 17463 comments

"You could say: compose a song that has the lyrics to be like Taylor Swift, but the vocals to be in the style of Bruno Mars, but I want the theme to be more Harry Styles," continued the source. "The output you get is due to the fact the AI has been trained on those artists' intellectual property." 

Once again, the music business is a generation behind in technology and its effect on their business model.  They are like a dinosaur in quicksand.  A generation ago, file-sharing nearly destroyed the business, all because these companies didn't have the foresight to create a usable, simple and economical way of purchasing digital music.  So, their response was to go Defcon One on not just companies but individuals (as to make an example of them).  This paved the way for Apple's iTunes Music Store, which they were also slow on embracing.  Now we're in the streaming age, and the shortsighted hubris continues.

So an AI model analyzes songs on various services.  But before that occurs, the AI model has to be allowed access to that material.  That means a human has to allow the AI model to do that, presumably through a subscription.   So, there's really no legal or moral basis to say that AI isn't allowed to listen.  Moreover, it hasn't apparently occurred to the Music Dinosaurs that if someone gives AI a prompt like the one above, it means the they are interested in Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, and Harry Styles.  Repeat this, and it only increases the chances of more awareness of the artists.  It's something that content creators and even publishers have figured out with YouTube.  Why would AI be any different?  

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foregoneconclusion 13 Years · 2900 comments

sdw2001 said: So an AI model analyzes songs on various services.  But before that occurs, the AI model has to be allowed access to that material.  That means a human has to allow the AI model to do that, presumably through a subscription.   So, there's really no legal or moral basis to say that AI isn't allowed to listen.  

"AI" is just a marketing term that Silicon Valley has latched onto in an effort to obscure what these programs actually do. There's no learning or thinking or creating happening. It's just brute force data manipulation and it requires constant access to exact copies of the writing/art/music. Using exact copies of public domain content is fine. Using exact copies of content that the software company owns outright is fine. But using exact copies of copyrighted content without permission for anything other than "personal use" is a scam. 

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foregoneconclusion 13 Years · 2900 comments

DAalseth said:
Good!
My nephew writes music for movies and TV. He’s very good at what he does and is paid well for it. But I can see a day when the studios tell him, “Yes your music is fantastic, but we can get good enough music from the AI composer for a few pennies.” At that point his career will be over and him, his wife, and their two kids will be out on the street.
This is the real cost of AI moving into the arts.

Yep...the programs in question are solving nickel/dime financial problems and not creative problems. 

3 Likes · 0 Dislikes
sdw2001 24 Years · 17463 comments

DAalseth said:
Good!
My nephew writes music for movies and TV. He’s very good at what he does and is paid well for it. But I can see a day when the studios tell him, “Yes your music is fantastic, but we can get good enough music from the AI composer for a few pennies.” At that point his career will be over and him, his wife, and their two kids will be out on the street.
This is the real cost of AI moving into the arts.


Well, that's not necessarily true.  First, it won't happen overnight.  Secondly, technological change always destroys some jobs and creates others.  And while AI may change the way he does his job (perhaps very significantly) it's unlikely top replace him completely.  AI cannot make artistic choices.  It can assist with them, but it can't make them.  I do a lot of video editing with audio.  AI could help me sync clips to the audio, time transitions, suggest themes, etc.  But it can't pick which royalty-free music fits the voice of the video beyond generic "emotional piano music" or "country two step".   Creating an emotional reaction and communicating feelings requires....feelings.  

4 Likes · 0 Dislikes