AI
The U.K. government’s plans to allow artificial intelligence firms to use copyrighted work, including music, have been dealt another setback by the House of Lords.
An amendment to the data bill which required AI companies to disclose the copyrighted works their models are trained on was backed by peers in the upper chamber of U.K. Parliament, despite government opposition.
The U.K.’s government has proposed an “opt out” approach for copyrighted material, meaning that the creator or owner must explicitly choose for their work not to be eligible for training AI models. The amendment was tabled by crossbench peer Beeban Kidron and was passed by 272 votes to 125 on Monday (May 12).
The data bill will now return to the House of Commons, though the government could remove Kidron’s amendment and send the bill back to the House of Lords next week.
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Kidron said: “I want to reject the notion that those of us who are against government plans are against technology. Creators do not deny the creative and economic value of AI, but we do deny the assertion that we should have to build AI for free with our work, and then rent it back from those who stole it.
“My lords, it is an assault on the British economy and it is happening at scale to a sector worth £120bn ($158bn) to the UK, an industry that is central to the industrial strategy and of enormous cultural import.”
The “opt out” move has proved unpopular with many in the creative fields, particularly in the music space. Prior to the vote, over 400 British musicians including Elton John, Paul McCartney, Dua Lipa, Coldplay, Kate Bush and more signed an open letter calling on U.K. prime minister Sir Keir Starmer to update copyright laws to protect their work from AI companies.
The letter said that such an approach would threaten “the UK’s position as a creative powerhouse,” and signatories included major players such as Sir Lucian Grainge (Universal Music Group CEO), Jason Iley MBE (Sony Music UK CEO), Tony Harlow (Warner Music UK CEO) and Dickon Stainer (Universal Music UK CEO).
A spokesperson for the government responded to the letter, saying: “We want our creative industries and AI companies to flourish, which is why we’re consulting on a package of measures that we hope will work for both sectors.”
They added: “We’re clear that no changes will be considered unless we are completely satisfied they work for creators.”
Sophie Jones, chief strategist office for the BPI, said: “The House of Lords has once again taken the right decision by voting to establish vital transparency obligations for AI companies. Transparency is crucial in ensuring that the creative industries can retain control over how their works are used, enabling both the licensing and enforcement of rights. If the Government chooses to remove this clause in the House of Commons, it would be preventing progress on a fundamental cornerstone which can help build trust and greater collaboration between the creative and tech sectors, and it would be at odds with its own ambition to build a licensing market in the UK.”
On Friday (May 9), SoundCloud encountered user backlash after AI music expert and founder of Fairly Trained, Ed Newton-Rex, posted on X that SoundCloud’s terms of service quietly changed in February 2024 to allow the platform the ability to “inform, train, develop or serve as input” to AI models. Over the weekend, SoundCloud clarified via a statement, originally sent to The Verge and also obtained by Billboard, that reads in part: “SoundCloud has never used artist content to train AI models, nor do we develop AI tools or allow third parties to scrape or use SoundCloud content from our platform for AI training purposes.”
The streaming service adds that this change was made last year “to clarify how content may interact with AI technologies within SoundCloud’s own platform,” including AI-powered personalized recommendation tools, streaming fraud detection, and more, and it apparently did not mean that SoundCloud was allowing external AI companies to train on its users’ songs.
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SoundCloud seems to claim the right to train on people’s uploaded music in their terms. I think they have major questions to answer over this.I checked the wayback machine – it seems to have been added to their terms on 12th Feb 2024. I’m a SoundCloud user and I can’t see any… pic.twitter.com/NIk7TP7K3C— Ed Newton-Rex (@ednewtonrex) May 9, 2025
Over the years, SoundCloud has announced various partnerships with AI companies, including its acquisition of Singapore-based AI music curation company Musiio in 2022. SoundCloud’s statement added, “Tools like Musiio are strictly used to power artist discovery and content organization, not to train generative AI models.” SoundCloud also has integrations in place with AI firms like Tuney, Voice-Swap, Fadr, Soundful, Tuttii, AIBeatz, TwoShot, Starmony and ACE Studio, and it has teamed up with content identification companies Pex and Audible Magic to ensure these integrations provide rights holders with proper credit and compensation.
The company doesn’t totally rule out the possibility that users’ works will be used for AI training in the future, but says “no such use has taken place to date,” adding that “SoundCloud will introduce robust internal permissioning controls to govern any potential future use. Should we ever consider using user content to train generative AI models, we would introduce clear opt-out mechanisms in advance—at a minimum—and remain committed to transparency with our creator community.”
Read the full statement from SoundCloud below.
“SoundCloud has always been and will remain artist-first. Our focus is on empowering artists with control, clarity, and meaningful opportunities to grow. We believe AI, when developed responsibly, can expand creative potential—especially when guided by principles of consent, attribution, and fair compensation.
SoundCloud has never used artist content to train AI models, nor do we develop AI tools or allow third parties to scrape or use SoundCloud content from our platform for AI training purposes. In fact, we implemented technical safeguards, including a “no AI” tag on our site to explicitly prohibit unauthorized use.
The February 2024 update to our Terms of Service was intended to clarify how content may interact with AI technologies within SoundCloud’s own platform. Use cases include personalized recommendations, content organization, fraud detection, and improvements to content identification with the help of AI Technologies.
Any future application of AI at SoundCloud will be designed to support human artists, enhancing the tools, capabilities, reach and opportunities available to them on our platform. Examples include improving music recommendations, generating playlists, organizing content, and detecting fraudulent activity. These efforts are aligned with existing licensing agreements and ethical standards. Tools like Musiio are strictly used to power artist discovery and content organization, not to train generative AI models.
We understand the concerns raised and remain committed to open dialogue. Artists will continue to have control over their work, and we’ll keep our community informed every step of the way as we explore innovation and apply AI technologies responsibly, especially as legal and commercial frameworks continue to evolve.”
BeatStars has partnered with Sureel, an AI music detection and attribution company, to provide its creators with the ability to express their desire to “opt out” of their works being used in AI training.
To date, AI music companies in the United States are not required to honor opt-outs, but through this partnership, Sureel and Beatstars, the world’s largest music marketplace, hope to create clarity for AI music companies that are wishing to avoid legal and reputational risks and create a digital ledger to keep track of beatmakers’ wishes regarding AI training.
Here’s how it works: Beatstars will send formal opt-out notices for every music asset and artist on its platform, and all of the creators’ choices will be documented on a portal that any AI company can access. By default, all tracks will be marked as shielded from AI training unless permission is granted. Companies can also access creators’ wishes using Sureel’s API. It will also automatically communicate the creators’ desires via a robots.txt file, which is a way to block AI companies that are crawling the web for new training data.
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As the U.S. — and countries around the world — continue to debate how to properly regulate issues related to AI, start-ups in the private sector, like Sureel, are trying to find faster solutions, including tools for opting in and out of AI training, detection technology to flag and verify AI generated works, and more.
“This partnership is an extension of our longstanding commitment to put creators first,” said Abe Batshon, CEO of BeatStars, in a statement. “We recognize that some AI companies might not respect intellectual property, so we are taking definitive action to ensure our community’s work remains protected and valued. Ethical AI is the future, and we’re leading the charge in making sure creators are not left behind.”
“BeatStars isn’t just a marketplace — it’s one of the most important creator communities in the world,” added Dr. Tamay Aykut, founder/CEO of Sureel. “They’ve built their platform around trust, transparency, and putting artists in control. That’s exactly the type of environment where our technology belongs. This partnership proves you can scale innovation and ethics together — and shows the rest of the industry what responsible AI collaboration looks like.”
Generative AI — the creation of compositions from nothing in seconds — isn’t disrupting music licensing; it’s accelerating the economic impact of a system that was never built to last. Here’s the sick reality: If a generative AI company wanted to ethically license Travis Scott’s “Sicko Mode” to train their models, they’d need approvals from more than 30 rights holders, with that number doubling based on rights resold or reassigned after the track’s release. Finding and engaging with all of those parties? Good luck. No unified music database exists to identify rights holders, and even if it did, outdated information, unanswered emails, and, in some cases, deceased rights holders or a group potentially involved in a rap beef make the process a nonstarter.
The music licensing system, or lack thereof, is so fragmented that most AI companies don’t even try. They steal first and deal with lawsuits later. Clearing “Sicko Mode” isn’t just difficult; it’s impossible — a cold example of the complexity of licensing commercial music for AI training that seems left out of most debates surrounding ethical approaches.
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For those outside the music business, it’s easy to assume that licensing a song is as simple as getting permission from the artist. But in reality, every track is a tangled web of rights, split across songwriters, producers, publishers and administrators, each with their own deals, disputes and gatekeepers. Now multiply the chaos of clearing one track by the millions of tracks needed for an AI training set, and you’ll quickly see why licensing commercial music for AI at scale is a fool’s errand today.
Generative AI is exposing and accelerating the weaknesses in the traditional music revenue model by flooding the market with more music, driving down licensing fees and further complicating ownership rights. As brands and content creators turn to AI-generated compositions, demand for traditional catalogs will decline, impacting synch and licensing revenues once projected to grow over the next decade.
Hard truths don’t wait for permission. The entrance of generative AI has exposed the broken system of copyright management and its outdated black-box monetization methods.
The latest RIAA report shows that while U.S. paid subscriptions have crossed 100 million and revenue hit a record $17.7 billion in 2024, streaming growth has nearly halved — from 8.1% in 2023 to just 3.6% in 2024. The market is plateauing, and the question isn’t if the industry needs a new revenue driver — it’s where that growth will come from. Generative AI is that next wave. If architected ethically, it won’t just create new technological innovation in music; it will create revenue.
Ironically, the very thing being painted as an existential threat to the industry may be the thing capable of saving it. AI is reshaping music faster than anyone expected, yet its ethical foundation remains unwritten. So we need to move fast.
A Change is Gonna Come: Why Music Needs Ethical AI as a Catalyst for Monetization
Let’s start by stopping. Generative AI isn’t our villain. It’s not here to replace artistry. It’s a creative partner, a collaborator, a tool that lets musicians work faster, dream bigger and push boundaries in ways we’ve never seen before. While some still doubt AI’s potential because today’s ethically trained outputs may sound like they’re in their infancy, let me be clear: It’s evolving fast. What feels novel now will be industry-standard tomorrow.
Our problem is, and always has been, a lack of transparency. Many AI platforms have trained on commercial catalogs without permission (first they lied about it, then they came clean), extracting value without compensation. “Sicko Mode” very likely included. That behavior isn’t just unethical; it’s economically destructive, devaluing catalogs as imitation tracks saturate the market while the underlying copyrights earn nothing.
If we’re crying about market flooding right now, we’re missing the point. Because what if rights holders and artists participated in those tracks? Energy needs to go into rethinking how music is valued and monetized across licensing, ad tech and digital distribution. Ethical AI frameworks can ensure proper attribution, dynamic pricing and serious revenue generation for rights holders.
Jen, the ethically-trained generative AI music platform I co-founded, has already set a precedent by training exclusively on 100% licensed music, proving that responsible AI isn’t an abstract concept, it’s a choice. I just avoided Travis’ catalog due to its licensing complexities. Because time is of the essence. We are entering an era of co-creation, where technology can enhance artistry and create new revenue opportunities rather than replace them. Music isn’t just an asset; it’s a cultural force. And it must be treated as such.
Come Together: Why Opt-In is the Only Path Forward and Opt-Out Doesn’t Work
There’s a growing push for AI platforms to adopt opt-out mechanisms, where rights holders must proactively remove their work from AI training datasets. At first glance, this might seem like a fair compromise. In reality, it’s a logistical nightmare destined to fail.
A recent incident in the U.K. highlights these challenges: over 1,000 musicians, including Kate Bush and Damon Albarn, released a silent album titled “Is This What We Want?” to protest proposed changes to copyright laws that would allow AI companies to use artists’ work without explicit permission. This collective action underscores the creative community’s concerns about the impracticality and potential exploitation inherent in opt-out systems.
For opt-out to work, platforms would need to maintain up-to-date global databases tracking every artist, writer, and producer’s opt-out status or rely on a third party to do so. Neither approach is scalable, enforceable, or backed by a viable business model. No third party is incentivized to take on this responsibility. Full stop.
Music, up until now, has been created predominantly by humans, and human dynamics are inherently complex. Consider a band that breaks up — one member might refuse to opt out purely to spite another, preventing consensus on the use of a shared track. Even if opt-out were technically feasible, interpersonal conflicts would create chaos. This is an often overlooked but critical flaw in the system.
Beyond that, opt-out shifts the burden onto artists, forcing them to police AI models instead of making music. This approach doesn’t close a loophole — it widens it. AI companies will scrape music first and deal with removals later, all while benefiting from the data they’ve already extracted. By the time an artist realizes their work was used, it’s too late. The damage is done.
This is why opt-in is the only viable future for ethical AI. The burden should be on AI companies to prove they have permission before using music — not on artists to chase down every violation. Right now, the system has creators in a headlock.
Speaking of, I want to point out another example of entrepreneurs fighting for and building solutions. Perhaps she’s fighting because she’s an artist herself and deeply knows how the wrong choices affect her livelihood. Grammy-winning and Billboard Hot 100-charting artist, producer and music-tech pioneer Imogen Heap has spent over a decade tackling the industry’s toughest challenges. Her non-profit platform, Auracles, is a much-needed missing data layer for music that enables music makers to create a digital ID that holds their rights information and can grant permissions for approved uses of their works — including for generative AI training or product innovation. We need to support these types of solutions. And stop condoning the camps that feel that stealing music is fair game.
Opt-in isn’t just possible, it’s absolutely necessary. By building systems rooted in transparency, fairness and collaboration, we can forge a future where AI and music thrive together, driven by creativity and respect.
The challenge here isn’t in building better AI models — it’s designing the right licensing frameworks from the start. Ethical training isn’t a checkbox; it’s a foundational choice. Crafting these frameworks is an art in itself, just like the music we’re protecting.
Transparent licensing frameworks and artist-first models aren’t just solutions; they’re the guardrails preventing another industry freefall. We’ve seen it before — Napster, TikTok (yes, I know you’re tired of hearing these examples) — where innovation outpaced infrastructure, exposing the cracks in old systems. This time, we have a shot at doing it right. Get it right, and our revenue rises. Get it wrong and… [enter your prompt here].
Shara Senderoff is a well-respected serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist pioneering the future of music creation and monetization through ethically trained generative AI as Co-Founder & CEO of Jen. Senderoff is an industry thought leader with an unwavering commitment to artists and their rights.
JD Vance is certainly getting things done. In the middle of February, the vice president went to Munich to tell Europeans to stop isolating far-right parties, just after speaking at the Paris AI Action Summit, where he warned against strict government regulation. Talk about not knowing an audience: It would be hard to offend more Europeans in less time without kvetching about their vacation time.
This week, my colleague Kristin Robinson wrote a very smart column about what Vance’s — and presumably the Trump administration’s — reluctance to regulate AI might mean for copyright law in the U.S. Both copyright and AI are global issues, of course, so it’s worth noting that efforts by Silicon Valley to keep the Internet unregulated — not only in terms of copyright, but also in terms of privacy and competition law — often run aground in Europe. Vance, like Elon Musk, may simply resent that U.S. technology companies have to follow European laws when they do business there. If he wants to change that dynamic, though, he needs to start by assuring Europeans that the U.S. can regulate its own businesses — not tell them outright that it doesn’t want to do so.
Silicon Valley sees technology as an irresistible force but lawmakers in Brussels, who see privacy and authors’ rights as fundamental to society, have proven to be an immovable object. (Like Nate Dogg and Warren G, they have to regulate.) When they collide, as they have every few years for the past quarter-century, they release massive amounts of energy, in the form of absurd overstatements, and then each give a little ground. (Remember all the claims about how the European data-protection regulation would complicate the Web, or how the 2019 copyright directive would “break the internet?” Turns out it works fine.) In the end, these EU laws often become default global regulations, because it’s easier to run platforms the same way everywhere. And while all of them are pretty complicated, they tend to work reasonably well.
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Like many politicians, Vance seems to see the development of AI as a race that one side can somehow win, to its sole benefit. Maybe. On a consumer level, though, online technology tends to emerge gradually and spread globally, and the winners are often companies that use their other products to become default standards. (The losers are often companies that employ more people and pay more taxes, which in politics isn’t so great.) Let’s face it: The best search engine is often the one on your phone; the best map system is whatever’s best integrated into the device you’re using. To the extent that policymakers see this as a race, does winning mean simply developing the best AI, even if it ends up turning into AM or Skynet? Or does winning mean developing AI technology that can create jobs as well as destroy them?
Much of this debate goes far beyond the scope of copyright — let alone the music business — and it’s humbling to consider the prospect of creating rules for something that’s smarter than humans. That’s an important distinction. While developing AI technology before other countries may be a national security issue that justifies a moon-shot urgency, that has nothing to do with allowing software to ingest Blue Öyster Cult songs without a license. Software algorithms are already creating works of art, and they will inevitably continue to do so. But let’s not relax copyright law out of a fear of needing to stay ahead of the Chinese.
Vance didn’t specifically mention copyright — the closest he got to the subject of content was saying “we feel strongly that AI must remain free from ideological bias.” But he did criticize European privacy regulations, which he said require “paying endless legal compliance costs or otherwise risking massive fines.” If there’s another way to protect individual privacy online, though, he didn’t mention it. For that matter, it’s hard to imagine a way to ensure AI remains free from bias without some kind of regulatory regime. Can Congress write and pass a fair and reasonable law to do that? Or will this depend on the same Europeans that Vance just made fun of?
That brings us back to copyright. In the Anglo-American world, including the U.S., copyright is essentially a commercial right, akin to a property right protected by statute. That right, like most, has some exceptions, most relevant fair use. The equivalent under the French civil law tradition is authors’ rights — droit d’auteur — which is more of a fundamental right. (I’m vastly oversimplifying this.) So what seems in the U.S. to be a debate about property rights is in most of the EU more of an issue of human rights. Governments have no choice but to protect them.
There’s going to be a similar debate about privacy. AI algorithms may soon be able to identify and find or deduce information about individuals that they would not choose to share. In some cases, such as security, this might be a good thing. In most, however, it has the potential to be awful: It’s one thing to use AI and databases to identify criminals, quite another to find people who might practice a certain religion or want to buy jeans. The U.S. may not have a problem with that, if people are out in public, but European countries will. As with Napster so many years ago, the relatively small music business could offer an advance look at what will become very important issues.
Inevitably, with the Trump administration, everything comes down to winning — more specifically getting the better end of the deal. At some point, AI will become just another commercial issue, and U.S. companies will only have access to foreign markets if they comply with the laws there. Vance wants to loosen them, which is fair enough. But this won’t help the U.S. — just one particular business in it. And Europeans will push back — as they should.
Last month, Vice President J.D. Vance represented the U.S. at the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris. In a speech addressing top leaders from around the world, he declared, “I think our response [to AI] is to be too self-conscious, too risk-averse, but never have I encountered a breakthrough in tech that so clearly calls us to do precisely the opposite. […] We believe excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry just as it’s taking off.”
Vance’s comments marked a stark shift from the Biden administration, which often spoke about weighing AI’s “profound possibilities” with its “risks,” as the former president put it in his farewell address in January. In the wake of Vance’s remarks in Paris, it’s clear that in the Trump White House, AI safety is out and the race for dominance is in. What does that mean for the music business and its quest to protect copyrights and publicity rights in the AI age?
“All the focus is on the competition with China, so national security has become the number one issue with AI in the Trump administration,” says Mitch Glazier, CEO/president of the Recording Industry Association of America. “But for our industry, it’s interesting. The [Trump administration] does seem to be saying at the same time that we also need to be ‘America First’ with our [intellectual property] too. It’s both ‘America First’ for IP and ‘America First’ for AI.”
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That, Glazier thinks, provides an opportunity for the music business to continue to push its AI agenda in D.C. While the president does not have the remit to make alterations to copyright protection in the U.S., the Trump administration still has powerful sway with the Republican-dominated legislative branch, where the RIAA, the Recording Academy and others have been fighting to get new protections for music on the books. Glazier says there’s been no change in strategy there — it’s still full steam ahead, trying to get those bills passed into law in 2025.
Top copyright attorney Jacqueline Charlesworth, partner at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, still fears that Vance’s speech — as well as President Trump’s inauguration in January, where he was flanked by top executives from Apple, Meta, Amazon and Alphabet — “reflected a lot of influence from the large tech platforms.” Many major tech companies have taken the position that training their AI models on copyrights does not require consent, credit or compensation. “My concern is that creators and copyright owners will be casualties in the AI race,” she says.
For David Israelite, president/CEO of the National Music Publishers’ Association, it’s still too early to totally understand the new administration’s views on copyright and AI. But, he says, “we are concerned when the language is about rushing to train these models — and that becoming a more important principle than how they are trained.”
Glazier holds out hope that Trump’s bullish approach to trade agreements with other nations could benefit American copyright owners and may influence trade partners to honor U.S. copyrights. Specifically, he points to the U.K., where the government has recently proposed granting AI companies unrestricted access to copyrighted material for training their models unless the rights holder manually opts out. Widely despised by copyright holders of all kinds, the music industry has protested the opt-out proposal in recent weeks through op-eds in national newspapers, comments to the U.K. government and through a silent album, Is This What We Want?, co-authored by a thousand U.K. artists, including Kate Bush, Damon Albarn and Hans Zimmer.
Organized by AI developer, musician and founder of AI safety non-profit Fairly Trained, Ed Newton-Rex, Is This What We Want? features silent tracks recorded in famous studios around London to demonstrate the potential consequences of not protecting copyrighted songs. “The artists and the industry in the U.K. have done an incredible job,” says Glazier. “If for some reason the U.K. does impose this opt-out, which we think is totally unworkable, then this administration may have an opportunity to apply pressure because of a renewal of trade negotiations.”
Israelite agrees. “Much of the intellectual property fueling these AI models is American,” he says. “The U.S. tackles copyright issues all the time in trade agreements, so we are always looking into that angle of it.”
It’s not just American music industry trade groups that have been following the Trump administration’s approach to AI. Abbas Lightwalla, director of global legal policy for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the global organization representing the interests of the recorded music business, says he and his colleagues followed Vance’s Paris speech “with great interest,” and that future trade agreements between the U.S. and other nations are “absolutely on the radar,” given that IFPI advocates across the world for the music industry’s interests in trade negotiations. “It’s crucial to us that copyright is protected in every market,” he says. “It’s a cross-border issue… If the U.S. is doing the same, then I think that’s a benefit to every culture everywhere to be honest.”
Charlesworth says this struggle is nothing new; the music industry has dealt with challenges to copyright protection for decades. “In reflecting on this, I feel like, starting in the ‘90s and 2000s, the tech business had this ‘take now, pay later’ mentality to copyright. Now, it feels like it’s turned into ‘take now, and see if you can get away with it.’ It’s not even pay later.”
As the AI race continues to pick up at a rapid pace, Israelite says he’s “not that hopeful that we are going to see any kind of government action quickly that would give us guidance” — so he’s also watching the active lawsuits surrounding AI training and copyright closely and looking to the commercial space for businesses in AI and IP that are voluntarily working out solutions together. “We’re very involved and focused on partnerships with AI that can help pave the way for how this technology provides new revenue opportunities for music, not just threats,” he says.
Glazier says he’s working in the commercial marketplace, too. “We have 60 licensing agreements in place right now between AI companies and music companies,” he says. Meanwhile, the RIAA is still watching the two lawsuits it spearheaded for the three major music companies against AI music startups Suno and Udio and is working to get bills like the NO FAKES Act and NO AI FRAUD Act passed into law.
“While IP wasn’t on the radar in Vance’s speech, the aftermath of it totally shifted the conversation,” says Glazier. “We just have to keep working to protect copyrights.”
Celine Dion is speaking out against artificial intelligence-generated music that is using her likeness.
The legendary vocalist took to Instagram on Friday (March 7) to share a statement, writing, “It has come to our attention that unsanctioned, AI-generated music purporting to contain Celine Dion’s musical performances, and name and likeness, is currently circulating online and across various Digital Service Providers.”
The statement continued, “Please be advised that these recordings are fake and not approved, and are not songs from her official discography.”
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However, Dion did not indicate exactly which AI-generated songs or performances have been circulating. See her post here.
Dion recently made her long-awaited return to the stage last year, performing Édith Piaf’s 1950 classic “Hymne à L’Amour” on the Eiffel Tower at the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony in July. The event came after she cancelled the dates on her North American Courage world tour before revealing she is fighting Stiff Person Syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that causes severe muscle spasms. Accompanied by a piano and rocking a stunning white gown, the singer delivered her effortlessly flawless vocals as she belted the lyrics to the song, which translates to “The Hymn of Love.”
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“I haven’t fought the illness; it’s still within me and will be forever,” she told Vogue France early last year, noting that she follows athletic, physical and vocal therapy five times a week. “Hopefully, we’ll find a miracle, a way to heal through scientific research, but I have to learn to live with it. I work on everything, from my toes to my knees, calves, fingers, singing, voice… It’s the condition I have to learn to live with now, by stopping questioning myself.”
She concluded, “There is one thing that will never stop, and that’s the desire. It’s the passion. It’s the dream. It’s the determination.”
Vermillio, an AI licensing and protection platform, raised $16 million in Series A funding led by Sony Music and DNS Capital, the company announced on Monday (March 3). This marks the first time Sony Music has invested in an AI music company.
Sony Music’s relationship with Vermillio dates back to 2023, when the two companies collaborated on a project for The Orb and David Gilmour. Through the partnership, fans could use Vermillio’s proprietary AI tech to create personalized remixes of the acts’ 2010 ambient album Metallic Spheres.
According to a press release, Vermillio plans to use the funds to scale operations and “continue building out solutions for a generative AI internet that enables talent, studios, record labels, and more to protect and monetize their content.”
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Vermillio’s goal is to create an AI platform that securely licenses intellectual property (IP). One of its core products is TraceID, which provides protection and third-party attribution for artists. Through it, the company claims artists and rights holders can control their data and AI rights.
Apart from its collaboration with Sony Music for the AI remix project, Vermillio has also worked with top talent agency WME to shield its clients from IP theft and find opportunities to monetize their name, image and likeness rights by licensing their data. Sony Pictures also worked with Vermillio to create an AI engine that allowed fans to make their own unique digital avatars in the style of Spider-Verse animation. Each of the fan generations were then tracked using TraceID so that all works could be tied back to the filmmakers’ original IP.
“We are setting a new standard for AI licensing — one that proactively enables consent, credit, and compensation for innovative opportunities,” said Dan Neely, co-founder/CEO of Vermillio, in a statement. “With the support of an innovation leader like Sony Music, Vermillio will continue building our products that ensure generative AI is utilized ethically and securely. At this critical moment in determining the future of AI and how to hold platforms accountable, we are proud to protect the world’s most beloved content and talent.”
“Sony Music is focused on developing responsible generative AI use cases that enhance the creativity and goals of our talent, protect their work, excite fans, and create new commercial possibilities,” added Dennis Kooker, president of global digital business at Sony Music Entertainment. “Dan Neely and the team at Vermillio share our vision that prioritizing proper consent, clear attribution and appropriate compensation for professional creators is foundational to unlocking monetization opportunities in this space. We look forward to expanding our successful collaboration with them as we work to support the growth of trusted platforms by enabling secure AI solutions that are mutually beneficial for technology innovators, artists and rightsholders.”
Amazon has partnered with AI music company Suno for a new integration with its voice assistant Alexa, allowing users to generate AI songs on command using voice prompts. This is part of a much larger rollout of new features for a “next generation” Alexa, dubbed Alexa+, powered by AI technology.
“Using Alexa’s integration with Suno, you can turn simple, creative requests into complete songs, including vocals, lyrics, and instrumentation. Looking to delight your partner with a personalized song for their birthday based on their love of cats, or surprise your kid by creating a rap using their favorite cartoon characters? Alexa+ has you covered,” says an Amazon blog post, posted Wednesday (Feb. 26).
Other new Alexa+ features include new voice filters, image generation, smart home operation, Uber booking and more. It also includes an integration with Ticketmaster to “find you the best tickets to an upcoming basketball game or to the concert you’ve been dying to go to,” according to the blog post.
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Suno is known to be one of the most powerful AI music models on the market, able to generate realistic lyrics, vocals and instrumentals at the click of a button. However, the company has come under scrutiny by the music business establishment for its training practices. Spearheaded by the RIAA, Universal Music Group, Sony Music and Warner Music Group came together last summer to sue Suno and its rival Udio, accusing the AI music company of copyright infringement “on an almost unimaginable scale.” At the time, neither AI company had admitted to training on copyrighted material.
In a later filing, Suno admitted that “it is no secret that the tens of millions of recordings that Suno’s model was trained on presumably included recordings whose rights are owned by the Plaintiffs in this case.” Its CEO, Mikey Shulman, added in a blog post that same day, “We see this as early but promising progress. Major record labels see this vision as a threat to their business. Each and every time there’s been innovation in music… the record labels have attempted to limit progress,” adding that Suno felt the lawsuit was “fundamentally flawed” and that “learning is not infringing.”
More recently, German collection society GEMA also took legal action against Suno in a case filed Jan. 21 in Munich Regional Court.
Still, a couple of music makers have sided with Suno. In October, Timbaland was announced as a strategic advisor for the AI music company, assisting in “creative direction” and “day-to-day product development.” Electronic artist and entrepreneur 3LAU has also been named as an advisor to the company.
News of Amazon’s deal with Suno comes just months after its streaming service, Amazon Music, was commended by the National Music Publishers’ Association for finding a way to add audiobooks to its “Unlimited” subscription tier in the U.S. without “decreas[ing] revenue for songwriters” — a contrast to Spotify, which decreased payments to U.S. publishers by about 40% when it added audiobooks to its premium tier.
Kate Bush, Damon Albarn, Annie Lennox and Hans Zimmer are among the artists who have contributed to a new “silent” album to protest the U.K. government’s stance on artificial intelligence (AI).
The record, titled Is This What We Want?, is “co-written” by more than 1,000 musicians and features recordings of empty studios and performance spaces. In an accompanying statement, the use of silence is said to represent “the impact on artists’ and music professionals’ livelihoods that is expected if the government does not change course.”
The record was organized by Ed Newton-Rex, the founder of Fairly Trained, a non-profit that certifies generative AI companies that respect creators’ rights. The tracklisting to the 12-track LP reads: “The British government must not legalise music theft to benefit AI companies.”
Is This What We Want? is now available on all major streaming platforms.
Also credited as co-writers are performers and songwriters from across the industry, including Billy Ocean, Ed O’Brien, Dan Smith (Bastille), The Clash, Mystery Jets, Jamiroquai, Imogen Heap, Yusuf / Cat Stevens, Riz Ahmed, Tori Amos, James MacMillan and Max Richter. The full list of musicians involved with the record can be viewed at the LP’s official website. All proceeds from the album will be donated to the charity Help Musicians.
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The release comes at the close of the British government’s 10-week consultation on how copyrighted content, including music, can lawfully be used by developers to train generative AI models. Initially, the government proposed a data mining exception to copyright law, meaning that AI developers could use copyrighted songs for AI training in instances where artists have not “opted out” of their work being included.
The government report said the “opt out” approach gives rightsholders a greater ability to control and license the use of their content, but it has proved controversial with creators and copyright holders. In March 2024, the 27-nation European Union passed the Artificial Intelligence Act, which requires transparency and accountability from AI developers about training methods and is viewed as more creator-friendly.
Speaking at the beginning of the consultation, Lisa Nandy, the U.K.’s Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, said in a statement: “This government firmly believes that our musicians, writers, artists and other creatives should have the ability to know and control how their content is used by AI firms and be able to seek licensing deals and fair payment. Achieving this, and ensuring legal certainty, will help our creative and AI sectors grow and innovate together in partnership.”
Industry body UK Music said in its most recent report that the music U.K. scene contributed £7.6 billion ($9.6 billion) to the country’s economy, while exports reached £4.6 billion ($5.8 billion).
“The government’s proposal would hand the life’s work of the country’s musicians to AI companies, for free, letting those companies exploit musicians’ work to outcompete them,” said Newton-Rex in a statement on the album release. “It is a plan that would not only be disastrous for musicians, but that is totally unnecessary: the UK can be leaders in AI without throwing our world-leading creative industries under the bus. This album shows that, however the government tries to justify it, musicians themselves are united in their thorough condemnation of this ill-thought-through plan.”
Jo Twist, CEO of the British Phonographic Institution (BPI), added, “The UK’s gold-standard copyright framework is central to the global success of our creative industries. We understand AI’s potential to drive change including greater productivity or improvements to public services, but it is entirely possible to realise this without destroying our status as a creative superpower.”
Speaking to Billboard U.K. in January, alt-pop star Imogen Heap — a co-writer on Is This What We Want? — expanded on her approach to AI. “The thing which makes me nervous is the provenance; there’s all this amazing video, art and poetry being generated by AI as well as music, but you know, creators need to be credited and they need to tell us where they’re training [the data] from.”