Speaker 1: I do want to We've got a little bit of
music news. This particularly caught my eye, so we have
we do have a few minutes before we uh before
we hit the top of the hour, So I wanted
to talk about this because this well, in a sense
it reflects or effects. I should say something that I've used.
This is from Music Businessworldwide dot com artist representatives launch
say No to Suno campaign Now Suno if you're not familiar,
it's an app. It's that uses AI. You can actually
create songs using AI. You just put in some simple prompts,
tell it what you want, and it will create a
song for you. Jenny and I it was over a
year ago now, maybe a year and a half ago,
the first time we ever used Suno. We did an
experiment with it, kind of live on the air, just
to see what would happen. It's very easy to use,
and it creates some very convincing you know, like you
wouldn't know just from listening to what it creates that
it's AI generated necessarily. I've used it quite a bit.
We've done some really fun things with it. But of
course we talk about AI a lot on the show,
and it's an effect on the music industry and how
artists feel about it, And so now there is this
say No to Suno campaign. Now, I have no intentions
of involving myself in any way in the campaign because
I actually like Suno and it would be hypocritical of
me to do so, even though my position ultimately is
and I think everyone knows this because of what I do,
what I'm involved in, the people I know, et cetera,
and the various you know, in terms of careers, the
various things I've done, I will always at the end
of the day, I will always always advocate on behalf
of artists. That's what I care about the most. But
that doesn't mean I won't use an AI app like
Suno to create a fun, silly song, because I do
use it for that quite a bit. So. Artists representatives, though,
have launched the say No to Suno campaign, saying AI
slop dilutes the royalty pools of legitimate artists from whose
music this slop is derived. So let's take a look
at this because again, and who knows, who knows? Maybe
looking at this article, maybe there's information in here that
will change my mind and make me decide to join
the say No to Suno campaign. I doubt it, but
let's see so it says here again. This is from
Music Businessworldwide dot com. A coalition of artist representatives has
published an open letter calling on the music community to
reject AI music generator Suno. In an open letter titled
say No to Suno, the artist reps described the company
as a brazen smash and grab platform, accusing it of
using unauthorized AI platform machinery trained on human artists. Work
published Monday, the twenty third, So this just happened this
past week on the Music Technology Policy Blog. The letter
was signed by figures including Ray Gubitz, executive director of
the Music Artists Coalition, Helene Lindvall, songwriter and president of
the European Composer and Songwriter Alliance, and Chris Castle of
the Artist Rights Institute. Other signatories included artist David C. Lowry,
artist and Artist Rights Alliance board member Tift Merritt, Blake Morgan,
artist producer and president of VCR Music Group, and Abbey North,
president of North Music Group. The letter arrives as Suno
continues to face copyright infringement lawsuits from major music companies
and rights organizations and by the way. By the way
I tell everybody, I say, if you're enjoying these apps
like Suno or Udio is another one, a very popular
AI music generator. If you enjoy these apps and use
these apps, enjoy them while we have them. Because the
sharks are circling. Okay, there's all kinds of litigation and
all kinds of stuff happening to try to get rid
of these apps permanently or well, probably no getting rid
of anything permanently, and there's probably no getting rid of
these apps period. But I'm just saying, don't be shocked
if one day, all of a sudden, you can't use
these anymore because they've been shut down. Okay, they've been
bankrupted by lawsuits, whatever whatever may happen. But right now,
this is what's going on. Okay, so so uh. The
RIAA filed suit against both Suno and rival Udo in
mid twenty twenty four, acting on behalf of all three majors,
alleging mass infringement of copyright. Udio has since reached settlements
with both Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, signing
licensing agreements with each for a new AI music platform
expected to launch this year. Interesting WMG Music Group also
settled separately with Suno in November, but the AI company
remains locked in legal battles with UMG and Sony Music Entertainment,
as well as European music rights holders, including Denmark's CODA
and Germany's Gema Gema. I've not used either of those.
In fact, I've never used Udio either. The only one
I've used as Souno Okay, it says here. The open
letter took aim at the broader concept of AI in
the music business, arguing that unauthorized generative AI platforms are
fundamentally different from previous technological disruptions in the music industry.
And by the way, as we've discussed many times on
the show, Jenny and I've talked about this, the music
industry has had many technological disruptions over the years, you know,
transitioning from vinyl and cassettes to CDs, napster. You know,
when Napster first came in and file sharing became a thing,
and all of a sudden, music was free. I was
working for trans World Entertainment at the time, which owned Fye,
Which and Strawberries and everything. When I was working for
them as a store manager in a music store, and
you know, we saw firsthand what was happening. All of
a sudden, people aren't buying CDs because they're getting the
music for free. And then there was all these debates
about while is file sharing stealing or are you just
taking advantage of what's available and so forth. We won't
get into all of that, but anyway, there's been many
That's probably the single biggest technological disruption that's happened in
the music industry is the Internet and the ability to
access music easily and without paying for it. That's probably
the biggest one, at least leading up to the advent
of AI. Well, not the advent of it, because AI
has been with us for a long time, but now
with these apps, the advent of these apps like Pseudo
and Udio. Okay, so it says here again, this is
from Music Business Worldwide dot com. The open letter took
aim Actually, well, I read this already, but this paragraph
is worth reading again. The open letter took aim at
the broader concept of AI and the music business, arguing
that unauthorized generative AI platforms are fundamentally different from previous
technological disruptions in the industry. The letter argued that the
quote hijacking of the world's entire treasure trove of music,
floods platforms with AI slop, and dilutes the royalty pools
of legitimate artists from whose music the slop is derived unquote. Right,
because when you create something using these apps, you're creating
something that derives its content from all all the content
that it has learned. You know, we call them large
learning models. You know, it's taking that from from everything
else that's available that it's learned, that it's taken in. Now,
when we talk about whether or not that's okay, my
argument has always been if I am arguing on the
side of not having a problem with any of this,
which I really don't, because you can't hold back technology.
It never works out. You have to adapt. You can't,
but you can't stop it. So you have to adapt.
When I let's say I write a song, and I've
written songs, I'm a musician. If I write a song,
anything that I write is somehow informed and influenced and
therefore is a product of all the music that I've
ever heard over the course of my life. Right, anything
that I create is somehow derived from everything that I've heard.
So how is that different from when a large learning
model learns music and then creates something from that. Now
it is different in fundamental ways. But I'm just offering
as a counter argument to you know, everyone who says,
oh AI it's got to be stopped, we can't have
AI generated music and so forth. Well, is it really
different from when a human creates music? Now it is different. Again,
I'm just playing Devil's advocate here, but that would be
my counter argument to that. Well, if I write a
song as a human being, my song that doesn't come
out of thin air. My song is based on knowledge
and information and experience and all of it from my
own life and all the music that I've ever consumed
over the course of my life. That's all I'm saying. Okay,
getting back to the article, The letter arrives amid a
growing volume of AI generated music hitting streaming platforms. Now,
this is a problem that we've talked about on the
show before too. Is all this AI generated music that
ends up on Spotify, for example, Well Spotify already, I mean,
I don't remember the numbers. We've talked about it before
on the show. The amount of music that is up
that is uploaded to Spotify globally on a daily basis
is staggering. So then Spotify has to figure out, well
what to get rid of because now that you factor
in the ease with which you can create music using
an app and then just upload it. Now it's it's
that problem of you know, you only have so much
storage and you have to keep creating more storage. And
you know now that because people tend to think of
it as well, it's just data. It doesn't take up
any space physically, it's just data. But that's not true.
Think about your own computer, your own devices, right, you
only have so much memory. You know, I only have
so much memory on my cell phone. Now I keep
my cell phone very clean because I don't want to
getting clogged up with stuff I don't need. But I
only have so much memory on it. So it's not
like it's no different for Spotify, for example, they only
have so much memory. Now they can create more, but
there is an expense to and also the larger the
catalog of music that is available on the platform, doesn't
it kind of dilute everything that's already there. So this
is a problem for Spotify. Not that I have any
great sympathy for Spotify because they don't pay very much,
but you know, in terms of royalties and so forth.
But you know, but now they've got a whole new problem.
This is why a few years ago, before before these
apps came out, even a few years ago, Spotify was
struggling with this. They were having to start to go
through I mean, obviously they have bots that do it,
but having to go through and delete low quality demo
recordings that people were just uploading to Spotify, thus diluting
what's on the platform. People uploading things that probably shouldn't
have been on there to begin with, because they weren't
of high enough quality to even be on the platform
to begin with. So now they've got a whole new problem.
Let's see. According to getting back to the article, according
to recent data from Deezer, proximately sixty thousand AI generated
tracks are being uploaded to the Paris headquartered streaming service
every day, with synthetic content now accounting for roughly thirty
nine percent of all music delivered to the platform daily.
Let's look at that again these numbers. According to recent
data from Deezer, approximately sixty thousand, sixty thousand AI generated
tracks every day are being uploaded. These are also revealed
that up to eighty five percent of all streams on
AI generated music on its platform were fraudulent in twenty
twenty five, up from the seventy percent figure it reported
in the prior year. Those streams are demonetized and removed
from the royalty pool. By comparison, in streaming fraud across
Caesers entire catalog accounted for eight percent of all streams
in twenty twenty five. By the way, I'm not sure.
I don't know what they mean by fraudulent. That is
not clear to me. What do they mean by fraudulent?
I'm not sure. Do they just mean anything that's created
with an app or what do they mean? While AI
generated music currently makes up only a small share of
total streams on Deezer up to three percent, the platform
maintains that generating fake streams remains the primary purpose for
uploading such content. The letter also weighted into the ongoing
industry debate over so called wald gardens in AI music,
criticizing a recent LinkedIn post by Paul Sinclairs, who Knows
chief music officer and EXWMG executive, who argued that closed
AI systems limit how people engage with music Sinclair penned
a lengthy post Grammy Week LinkedIn memo entitled open Studios,
not wald Gardens, which took direct aim at the approach
champion by universals A group in its recent AI licensing agreements.
UMG was the first major to settle its litigation with
Suno rival Udio in October twenty twenty five, alongside a
licensing deal for a new AI platform set to launch
this year. The concept of a walled garden was introduced
within that announcement, a model where AI generated music cannot
be downloaded or distributed outside the platform. Udio disabled downloads,
with users given a forty eight hour grace period to
retrieve previously created tracks before the walls went up. By
the way, this is the first time hearing about this
the walled garden concept. Around two months after that deal
was announced, in his annual memo to staff, UMG chairman
and CEO, Sir Lucian Grange appeared to warn against firms
quote validating business models that failed to respect artists work
and creativity and promote the exponential growth of AI slop
on streaming platforms. So, in other words, he's saying, don't
do this, don't make deals with AI, you're making a
deal with the devil. Effectively, you're getting in bed with
something you don't want. You don't want to encourage this.
If you start making deals with AI, you're going to
encourage this. I guess a quick counter argument might be, well,
if you look back to the previous seismic disruption in
the music industry, if you go back to Napster, what
was happening. Well, you know, the industry finally had to
start making some deals and some compromises and working some
stuff out. But what he's saying is, don't do that,
Do not encourage it. Michael Nash, executive vice president and
chief Digital Officer at UMG, explained the company's position in
further detail during an appearance on Billboards on the Record
podcast last month and outline the waldgarden concept in stark terms.
He said this quote, The concept of a wald garden
is to set up, through AI, a component of the
service for deep interaction with the artists and the content,
but not to create derivatives that you then take off
of the platform and post all over your socials and
post on Spotify and Amazon Music and Apple unquote. He
argued that by doing so you quote effectively use artists
content and their brand to create derivative derivatives where you're
going to compete with the artists on other platforms unquote.
Beyond Sinclair, who joined Suno in twenty twenty five July
twenty twenty five, the company has made other high profile
hires from the music industry to support its efforts to
build relationships with the sector, including former Merlin CEO Jimmy
Sorry Jeremy Sirata as chief commercial Officer and former Spotify
executive Sam Berger as Senior Director of Artist Partnerships. In November,
Suno closed a two hundred and fifty million dollars Series
C funding round. I don't want to get in all that. Okay,
never mind, don't care about that part. But that's the
end of the article anyway. But there you go. So again,
I will not be joining any such campaign. It would
be a critical of me to do so. But this
is all about the say No to Suno campaign.