AI Music FAQ: Can I remix Madonna? Is it all legal?
What if the artists give a thumbs up?
The latest offerings will test what fans of fans do when artists allow them to place their music in the AI sandbox.
For example, Warner Music, whose catalog includes songs by stars like Madonna, Bruno Mars and, yes, Neil Young, has a deal with Suno that allows the service to use music from specific artists if they sign up. Because “Madonna-style birthday song for my wife” can be a lot more interesting than “80s synth-pop song”. The only thing that remains unclear is who will sign up or sign up.
What can I do with my AI creation?
The industry is still fighting over whether to allow users to download their AI-generated song and upload it anywhere, or to restrict it to the “walled gardens” of the programs that generated it.
Isn’t the world of AI music full of scams?
There are plenty of legitimate uses for AI by real musicians and curious amateurs, but yes, scams and scams are a problem.
French steampunk service Deezer recently said that around 90,000 AI-generated songs are uploaded to its platform every day – most of them in low quality that no one listens to.
Deezer says that of the relatively small number of people who click, up to 85 percent are fraudulent. Cheater’s Guide: create AI tracks and then unleash armies of bots to click on them and generate royalties. As part of the funding pools used in streaming, online platforms pay proportional fees to the companies that provide the content, meaning that whatever is paid to the fake creators reduces what is left for the real artists.
Catching these scammers is a constant game of cat and mouse.
Recently, music industry groups, including the Grammys, have called for a tagging system that would identify music that was created using generative artificial intelligence.
What do the artists think?
They are not united. Some, like star producer Timbaland and performer Grimes, have welcomed the technology and shown their willingness to experiment.
Timbaland recently featured a virtual artist named TaTa Taktumi, whose vocals on the song “Fault x Pulse” were partially created by AI software, although humans created 80 to 85 percent of the song, Timbaland said in an interview with The New York Times: