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AI Music

First 'AI Music Creator' Signed by Record Label. More Ahead, or Just a Copyright Quandry? (apnews.com) 101

Posted by EditorDavid from the money-for-nothing dept.
"I have no musical talent at all," says Oliver McCann. "I can't sing, I can't play instruments, and I have no musical background at all!"

But the Associated Press describes 37-year-old McCann as a British "AI music creator" — and last month McCann signed with an independent record label "after one of his tracks racked up 3 million streams, in what's billed as 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% of songs uploaded to its platform every day are purely AI generated, though they only account for a tiny amount of total streams, hinting that few people are actually listening. Other, bigger streaming platforms like Spotify haven't released any figures on AI music... "It's a total boom. It's a tsunami," said Josh Antonuccio, director of Ohio University's School of Media Arts and Studies. 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, he said. [Antonuccio says later the cost of making a hit record "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." Though there's a lack of legal clarity over copyright issues.]

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... 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 artists 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, Annie Lennox and Damon Albarn, released a silent album to protest proposed changes to U.K. laws on AI they fear would erode their creative control.

Meanwhile, other artists, 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 synthesizers.
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First 'AI Music Creator' Signed by Record Label. More Ahead, or Just a Copyright Quandry? More

First 'AI Music Creator' Signed by Record Label. More Ahead, or Just a Copyright Quandry?

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  • Overall royalty decline (Score:5, Interesting)

    by will4 ( 7250692 ) on Sunday August 31, 2025 @11:49PM (#65629410)

    Expect the AI generated music will be pushed by Spotify and other streaming platforms to identify the better AI generated songs and also to avoid paying royalties.

    Music labels, touring artists and the like will be a declining industry with less job prospects and less musical acts making a career of commercial music.

    Add in a declining number of teenagers due to demographics and it accelerates.

    • Re:Overall royalty decline (Score:4, Informative)

      by sound+vision ( 884283 ) on Monday September 01, 2025 @12:22AM (#65629454) Journal

      They haven't figured out how to integrate AI-music into the industry yet.

      Certainly there's a market for it. Their challenge is catering to that market, who just want "some music", without turning off the rest of the market who want music of a certain quality.

      There is already a well-established "muzak" segment, with mostly commercial buyers, and very low production costs. They'd like to sell this to the general public, instead of just elevator manufacturers and building maintenance outfits. It could work, maybe, but I'm not confident.

      • Re:Overall royalty decline (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Monday September 01, 2025 @03:17AM (#65629588)

        Certainly there's a market for it.

        Is there? As a musician I'm constantly hearing from punters about the growing frusturation with clearly AI shit ending up on their playlists.

        And sure as fuck us musicians don't want it. Especially if its built on stealing our music. At least with Napster 90% of the time the attribution was there and those kids would turn up to our shows. This? Completely strips us out of the equasion. Fuck that.

        The only role for SUNO/UDIO/etc in the industry is to get sued and raided for copyright infringement. Why should some poor kid who ran a torrent tracker face prison, but when a CEO ramps the theft up to industrial scale they get invited to the whitehouse. Seems pretty back to front to me.

        • Certainly there's a market for it.

          Is there? As a musician I'm constantly hearing from punters about the growing frusturation with clearly AI shit ending up on their playlists.

          There are almost certainly markets for it.

          Do a search for "LoFi music for studying" and you'll see really bland, boring music that last for hours and has millions of views. AI can do that.

          Elevator music usually trash, so no one will mind if it's replaced by (cheaper) AI trash.

          Video game music often is irritatingly repetitive. If the music becomes less irritatingly repetitive through AI, then that's an improvement.

          Of course, these are just side quests, not real nutritious delicious music. The good s

        • It is quite telling that the "music" of this "creator" isn't linked to.

        • I'm a musician as well, and I've come across a bit of AI junk on YouTube and Soundcloud, that I don't want. That doesn't change the fact that someone else wants it. Lots of people don't hear music in the way we do, they just hear "some sounds" that are familiar and make them feel more at ease. Field recordings like rushing water and birds have the same effect on them.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Much of the appeal of music is the cultural context. People don't buy the crap churned out by the winner of some reality TV contest because it's good, they buy it because they became involved in that person's struggle.

        Even before that kind of slop, the music people tend to want to keep listening to had a special meaning at some point in their life. It brings back memories, the lyrics have some meaning to them, that kind of thing.

    • The Spotifies and Apple Musics of the world are also better positioned on the market to sell their own AI "music". They are both tech-savvy AND they also know what the general public likes (and they probably have some impact on the said general public's tastes in music as well).

      As a heavy metal fan, I, for one, welcome new AI overlords, and would totes listen to "new" Beethoven or Bach music, once it gets good enough. The purists can eat their hearts out for all I care.

    • I wonder if Spotify et al. might even start up a 'label' to generate music for them...? Perhaps to even generate it on demand?

      I'm not a big Spotify listener, but I'd imagine if you type in a genre or style, then you're probably happy to listen to just about anything that "suits you" (whatever that means). From a marketing perspective, you probably want to heard a few familiar tracks (so those are human generated, perhaps), and then some AI generated fluff in between - that Spotify doesn't need to pay much f

    • No, they won't avoid paying royalties... They'll pay them to the creator who uses AI.
      This recognizes that AI is simply a tool that can be used to make something

  • "Music" meaning what? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by greencfg ( 4875419 ) on Monday September 01, 2025 @12:26AM (#65629456)

    The definition of what music is has changed over time to patterned pieces of noise that can be generated by programming. No complexity, no inspiration, no art anymore. And we wonder it can be generated by a tool that excels in automating pattern-based generation?

    Diminishing the scope of what humans can do does not mean tools become human-like, just that people become tools.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Music has always been about specific patterns that humans find pleasing. There has never been complexity beyond it, because patterns themselves are not complex. They're very well defined, and taught at modern music schools.

      It's why people could write music down long before excel. Or computers. Or semiconductors. Or electricity.

      • Music has always been about specific patterns that humans find pleasing.

        No [youtube.com].

      • Since the invention of digital music, researchers have found fewer key changes, fewer key changes and fewer tempo changes. Music is as complex as the artist wants to make it. I don't understand the point of listening to music if there isn't anything interesting about it. Staying to the same key for the whole song is what children's music is made of and it's boring.
        • Should have been fewer volume changes, key changes and tempo changes. These are the things that make music interesting.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          It's worth noting that very few people listen to music because it's interesting. This is a well established fact in music theory, and why most popular music genres are all exceptionally formulaic and have been de facto made into a mostly automated production cycle. Before generative AI. Everything from Western Pop to KPop functions this way.

          People who are deeply into music as a hobby often either miss this entirely, or find popular music unattractive. But what they fail to grasp is that they're tiny, barely

          • Well then why do we need AI? Just have a signal that beeps every two seconds and profit! The truth is that more interesting music plays more. That's why almost every single from the last 40 years is a flash in the pan and there are still many stations that play music from the 60's and 70's.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              Because that isn't pleasing to the masses, just like "more interesting music" isn't pleasing to the masses.

              Literally, you's so far off to one extreme on this issue, that you can't separate center and the opposite extreme. They look the same to you, which is why you're confused why "signal that beeps every two seconds" isn't as profitable as formulaic pop music.

              • The point I'm trying to make is, even formulaic pop music has to have a hook and has to be pleasing to the ear. You may call ac/dc formulaic rock, but it is actually very difficult to play. It has a groove that AI has never been able to do. If a drum were to play only on beat and the singer and guitars only came in on beat and didn't express emotion in a way AI cannot, then people may turn it on but they won't listen to it for long.

                My dad had an old clock radio on in his garage 24/7 for ten years to the

                • Re: (Score:1)

                  by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                  I've no idea where you get your data from, but a lot of current gen AI music is in fact in the genre.

                  The only reason it hasn't become mainstream yet, is because this is just the first year of it existing. People are still learning the tools, and tools are rapidly progressing and getting better. AI generated music is already more popular than most music hipster genres combined on popular platforms like Spotify. And it's probably the fastest growing method of producing popular music. I would be very surprised

      • Music has always been about specific patterns that humans find pleasing. There has never been complexity beyond it, because patterns themselves are not complex.

        Only true if you restrict your definition of "music" to a very limited (and dumbed down) subset.

        Humans find pleasing?
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

        No complexity?
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

        (I believe you could still make an argument that you find example #1 very pleasing and example #2 not complex at all...that's your prerogative.)

  • Copyright quandry, indeed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by taustin ( 171655 ) on Monday September 01, 2025 @12:35AM (#65629466) Homepage Journal

    When he says "I have no musical ability," he's saying "what I produce is not eligible for copyright because I put zero creative input into it, and is in the public domain, so there's no reason the label has to actually pay me at all."

    So stands the rulings from the Library of Congress, which have been upheld by the courts (so far).

    Don't think the label doesn't know it, either.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by allo ( 1728082 )

      There is a difference between no ability and no creativity. And that's what people are bridging with AI. They are not skilled at the craft, but they are as creative as artists who are talented and trained. Now the new tool gives them the possibility create the works they have in their mind.

      If art means for you to take hours, days, maybe month to get the craft right, it is no art to you. If art is to you self-expression and getting things into your head into works others can perceive, ai art is just using an

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by fluffernutter ( 1411889 )
        But AI can't be creative, it's all a complex calculation that is randomized by the query. The fact that we cannot understand this calculation or do it ourselves does not make it creative. I can't find the square root of 100567 either, but that doesn't mean the calculator is creative for finding it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by allo ( 1728082 )

          I agree. But a human can use it in creative ways. Your brush can only do strokes, you AI can only generate random things without input. You are the one who is supposed to provide input. In the best case not just a simple prompt, but even just through prompts some people manage to get their vision into an image (or here: song).

          Also please let's clear up the "randomized" stereotypes. People her "random seed", "stochastic gradient descent" and "probabilities" and think it's playing dice.

          Usage: You can use AI m

      • If art means for you to take hours, days, maybe month to get the craft right, it is no art to you. If art is to you self-expression and getting things into your head into works others can perceive, ai art is just using another craft to create the same works.

        Sorry, but just having a general idea of what you want is not art. Which paint to use and the type of brushtrokes is what makes a painting, choice of words and and mood and ideas they convey is a major part of writing a novel, knowing how to place the notes together and which instruments will work best (and how they are to be played) is what makes music. Craft is not just a screwdriver you use to make art, application of craft is art.

        When you're writing prompts, you're not creating art, you're just commiss

        • I made art when I was 5. You can debate that all you want but my drawings with crayons were still art. Paint types, brush strokes, that's not important. I could dip my finger in any dye and swish it around on the canvas and draw that way and it's art.

          Do you consider a pop singer who uses autotune and doesn't write their own lyrics an artist? Doesn't sound like it from how I interpret your post. I'm sure many people would argue against that position.

          So really, the term artist is basically anyone that creates

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by allo ( 1728082 )

            I dislike the whole culture war some people try to create. Others dismiss that taping a banana to a wall is art. Everything can be art and the banana was. I am not impressed by it, but I still see the art in that.

            The banana is even interesting. Because the first person to tape a banana to a wall is creative. The second is a copycat. But a movement of thousands of people taping bananas to walls would again be creative. Just like a movement of other people to tear them down from walls. That would just be perf

          • I'm afraid you've misunderstood what I was saying. I absolutely agree that your crayon drawings at age 5 were art. Not art that had any value to anyone other than you or your close family (sorry, I'm assuming you were not a child genius artistic prodigy). But nevertheless, it was art, because you've done it yourself. I could paint something now and it wouldn't look much better than your 5yo crayon drawing, but it would also be art (although not good art).

            Paint types, brush strokes, that's not important

            Being skilled with the tools of your trade will allow

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by allo ( 1728082 )

          You are trying the old "AI art is commissioned" argument, which is trying to reduce the process to a single part.

          Try it yourself. Imagine an image you would like to draw, or maybe one you have drawn, and get an AI to create that very image. No image-to-image that would be cheating. You will notice, that "commissioning it" is a complex process, that finally leads to the result after many variations, commissions, recommissions, commissions for small parts to be changed.

          If you want to stick with the "commissio

          • The process may be faster than painting yourself, but you still have all control you want, because each time the artist deviates from your exact vision, you interrupt them and instruct the change. Wouldn't you say the result is your vision and not the artist's one?

            Not really, no. All generative AIs have the same fundamental limitation, and that is they're limited by what's in their training data. So all you can do is keep redoing bits you don't like until they're sort of somewhat close to what you wanted, because you're limited by what AI can produce. If what you want is not in the training data at all, you'll just have to settle for something that looks good enough. You said it yourself, a lengthy micromanagy commission is still a commission, it's still the artist (

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by allo ( 1728082 )

              That's like saying you can only draw watercolor images with watercolors. Of course each model has things it can do and cannot do by itself (you can easily extend it using techniques like LoRA, or giving additional input in the form of a sketch, depth maps, etc., though), but that does not say it inherently limits your art. It is only that each model is a tool for a certain style, or with most models, a selection of different styles. You cannot create a pencil sketch with a brush, but that's fine; if you wan

  • A computer , however large will never have any soul. AI does not have a soul. Music , the language of the soul will always stay out of reach of the most powerfull of them all. Just another attempt to justify the theft by AI companies, mass copyright theft. Evil touting crap to try to justify their massive scraping of all that's on the net for their benefit and sway the tribunals in their favor.Maybe American judges will fall for it.

    PS It's the same country that is seeking to move all Palestinians from their

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by cstacy ( 534252 )

      A computer, however large will never have any soul.

      You're just a computer, and there is no such thing as a soul. Just because today's computers are not emotional or something does not mean they never will be. (Probably not in your lifetime, though.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      I recently had an interesting discussion on evolution of religion from Animism to Shamanism, to Polytheism to Monotheism.

      And one trend that persists is that we're trending towards Divinity of Man. Animists worshipped animals, because they were the strong, dangerous and source of food (and therefore life) for hunter-gatherers. Animals are divine. Once traditions on what works and what doesn't were well established, most religions evolve into Shamanism, the worship of ancestors. Humans of long past are divine

      • I recently had an interesting discussion on evolution of religion from Animism to Shamanism, to Polytheism to Monotheism.

        Kind of dumb to call it evolution, since it's actually a devolution.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          Hilariously enough, this is a common expression of this specific current endpoint religious view. Because religious impulse is biologically hard wired in humans. You don't get to go without it. You only get to have some slight input into what fills your biological input.

          And people who think above line is a devolution tend to be the biggest proponents of Divinity of Man that exist today. Modern western left wingers. They worship things like "human rights" which are generally "rights to be free of consequence

    • A computer , however large will never have any soul. AI does not have a soul. Music , the language of the soul will always stay out of reach of the most powerfull of them all.

      This would be the start of a great comment if you had managed to define in any way "soul." Instead you went off on a rant about Gaza.

      • Soul is the cumulative effect of the five senses over a life. From the very moment we are born, the things that we perceive begin to shape us and the things that people perceive from us (ie crying) in turn shape them. None of this is going on with AI.

  • Music is made by... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Monday September 01, 2025 @12:48AM (#65629476)

    ...musicians playing live
    This is a silly fad. People continue to amaze me with the stupid stuff they do
    Music will survive, it's in our nature and musical talent is not rare

    • ...musicians playing live This is a silly fad. People continue to amaze me with the stupid stuff they do Music will survive, it's in our nature and musical talent is not rare

      Eh, what?

      Some people enjoy listening to music performed live. Some don't. (Me? I would, if only I could be one of very few in the audience ... I don't like crowds.)

      Just as a practical matter, most music isn't listened to live anymore. I mean I like bagpipes a lot, but there are not many pipe bands around me ...

      For most people, music is just pleasing patterns of sound that they listen to for fun and pleasure. I won't be surprised that a big percentage of it becomes AI generated.

      Yes, of course music will

      • Crowds are just a fabrication of the music industry, as are bands that sound better in a studio than on a stage. Omitting all of that, almost all music is better performed live.

        • No, studio sounds 100% better then live music. In fact, I HATE when artist just record their live shows and press a CD. Fuck that. I don't want to hear the crowd sing nor all the commentary between songs. If I wanted all that, I'd go to the show.

          I've felt this way since the 80s so it's not a new idea. I also do enjoy going to concerts and I buy merchandise to support the bands I like but let's not bullshit, the music sounds better when properly recorded in a studio with everything controlled.

          • That's fine, but then it's not really the real music that the artist makes.

            • Are you saying that if it's not live music, it's not real music? So all recorded music is "fake"? If it's all fake, then none of this AI noise should matter at all, you know, since only live sounds created by a human counts as music.

    • Music is made by musicians playing live

      This actually made me laugh because it reminds me of the guy on the street complaining about electronic music and saying "they are not artists because nobody can play the guitar" [youtube.com].

      !. There is nothing stopping this guy from having a live rendition of songs by using AI to recompose and remix them to create that "live performance" feeling.
      2. Live performances only exist as a means of generating revenue for artists as the record labels do not get a cut. It's plausible for an artist to do the work of a record lab

  • If 2Pac and Biggie can settle their beef with pizza, perhaps we can grow up a bit and accept some AI music with some nice pizza slices.
    #PizzaTrees #FTW

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • "I have no musical talent at all," says Oliver McCann. "I can't sing, I can't play instruments, and I have no musical background at all!"

    So, business as usual for the music industry - now there's AI involved too FTW.

  • "AI artists" are so fond of telling us that AI art is real art, and since it's the AI creating the art, the human shouldn't be credited.

    • The AI is just a tool. Did the guitar create the music or did a person using the guitar? Just like auto-tune was a tool and people were made and got over it. Now AI is a tool, people are mad and they will get over it. Can't wait for the next piece of technology to come along for us to get mad about then get over.

  • So not better than a DJ then? Most of them also know shit about music.

  • No talent (Score:3)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Monday September 01, 2025 @03:57AM (#65629612)

    "I have no musical talent at all," says Oliver McCann. "I can't sing, I can't play instruments, and I have no musical background at all!"

    No change there then. This man will fit right in the music industry.

  • Not seeing the reason for a moral panic about this.

    • That's likely because it won't have an impact on your wages. It doesn't impact my wages either. It might impact hopeful artist's wages though. So I could see artists being upset that their passion might not make them enough money to get by on. They'll just have to join the rest of us working jobs we are not passionate about either. That's life.

      AI also lowers the bar to music creation. It's never been cheaper to produce music then it is now. This of course brings more players into the market and that's more

  • I have always enjoyed keyboards, synths, and every kind of electronic music. That said, there is electronic music that plods on with the same sounds at the same tempo unchanging for the whole song, and there is other electronic music that constantly reinvents itself throughout the progression of the song while keeping to the same common theme. The first type is horrible to listen to and the latter type is great to listen to. I cannot imagine AI ever producing the latter type very well.

    • I can't imagine all sorts of things and yet there are people out there doing stuff that I never even dreamed of. Just because you can't imagine something doesn't mean it doesn't already exist or couldn't be created in the not so distant future.

      Also, there is no accounting for taste. You may hate country but love mumble rape. You may hate rock but enjoy pop. It's all music, regardless of how you feel about it.

      • In every genre there is good music and bad music. You don't have to know much about music to appreciate the difference in any genre whether you like that genre or not. I already said that I happen to like electronic but that doesn't mean I can listen to songs in that genre that were horribly done.

  • "I have no musical talent at all," says Oliver McCann. "I can't sing, I can't play instruments, and I have no musical background at all!"

    So, like most 'artists' these days.

  • AI artwork ( music/text/images ) ought to be treated like faux-synthetic-beef product . And producers punished! The prudent , value aware consumer does not consume items from either of those product classes. If you cannot afford corn-fed American beef ( or wild-caught salmon/haddock etc ), then save up for it . One steak and one fresh fish a week is fine ... lots of grain/veggie/cheeze/bean options for the other days. Yes, one-day a week McMac or KFC is fine. Likewise, experience local-mad

  • Meanwhile, other artists, such as will.i.am, Timbaland and Imogen Heap, have embraced the technology.

    Timbaland and will.i.am are using it. Well, maybe their output will get a little bit better then?

    Also, comparing AI generated songs with auto-tune is appropriate, as both allow people who canâ(TM)t make music to make it!

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