Ai music
Even before President Joe Biden announced that he was dropping out of the 2024 presidential race on July 21, extremely online millennials and Gen Zers had started posting memes on social media in support of Vice President Kamala Harris, who many hoped (and assumed) would take over for Biden after his disastrous debate performance in late June. And after Harris replaced him as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, it seemed the entire internet became completely coconut-pilled.
Along with traditional text- and image-based memes — which are nothing new — musical memes have also proliferated on short-form video sites like TikTok, Reels and Shorts, with users mashing up Harris quotes with popular songs using AI or more traditional methods of remixing. But these playful — or, in some cases, just plain strange — songs are more than just digital fun and games. The overwhelmingly pro-Harris memes are reaching millions of potential voters, and might help Harris mobilize the previously discouraged young voters she needs in order to win in November.
One audio, which has over 1.1 million likes on TikTok, pairs Harris’ memeable quote “do you think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” with the instrumental for “360” by Charli XCX. Another pitch-alters the same Harris quote over “The Star-Spangled Banner.” One anti-J.D. Vance audio pastes the Republican VP candidate saying “I’m a Never Trump Guy” over “Freek-a-Leek” by Petey Pablo. (After that clip went viral, the @KamalaHQ account also made its own video using the sound.)
There are also pro-Harris AI tracks, like one that replaces the lyrics to a Beyoncé song to make Queen Bey seemingly sing “you exist in the context of all in which you live,” another heavily memed Harris quote. A different AI track splices a Harris soundbite over DJ Johnrey’s viral track “Emergency Budots,” with an AI deepfake video of Harris and Pete Buttigieg dancing under a palm tree.
Beyond its political ramifications, this content also offers a glimpse into the future of music — one where we don’t just play our music, but where we play with it. In a sense, it’s the culmination of a trend that’s been brewing for decades. As music lovers have embraced sampling, remixing, the digital audio workstation, the Splice royalty-free sample library, Kanye West’s stem player and sped-up/slowed-down song edits, they’ve demonstrated a desire to have more control over static recordings than the traditional music consumption provides. And AI innovations can help to further facilitate this customizable listening experience.
Some music AI experts, including Suno’s CEO Mikey Shulman, are betting on a future where “anyone can make music” at the click of a button — and that everyone will want to. Often, I’ve heard folks who espouse this view of AI music compare it to photography, given photography is an art form which went from being something conducted by trained professionals in proper studio settings to being a ubiquitous activity aided by smartphones.
These entrepreneurs aren’t totally misguided — it’s clear based on user interest in Suno and Udio that there is a place for songs that are completely new and individual. But right now, it seems predictions about this technology’s role in the future of music consumption are too bullish. Music fans still crave familiarity, community and repetition when listening to music. It’s also scientifically proven that it takes multiple listens to form bonds with new songs — which is way more likely to happen with hit songs by artists you know and love, rather than individualized AI-generated tracks.
Instead, I think the average music listener will be way more interested in using AI to tweak their favorite hits. Listeners could use AI stem separation tools to create more bass-heavy mixes, for example, or some form of AI “timbre transfer” to make a song’s guitars sound more like a Les Paul than a Stratocaster (you could also go even further and change a guitar to be an entirely different instrument), or AI voice filters to change the lyrics of a song to include their best friend’s name.
Of course, there are still serious legal hurdles to customizing copyrighted sound recordings and songs if users share them publicly. Right now, any of the artists whose songs were used in these pro-Harris remixes could get them taken down upon request, citing copyright infringement. The NMPA has also expressed that it is willing to fight back against Spotify if it ever rolled out customizable song features on its platform. In a cease and desist letter, the NMPA warned the streaming service, saying, “We understand that Spotify wishes to offer a ‘remix’ feature…to ‘speed up, mash up, and otherwise edit’ their favorite songs to create derivative works. Spotify is on notice that release of any such feature without the proper licenses in place from our members may constitute additional direct infringement.”
So for now, edited songs will remain on social media platforms only, at least until they receive takedown requests. Still, consumer interest in music customization is only growing, and the popularity of pro-Harris campaign remixes serve as proof.
This analysis was published as part of Billboard’s new music technology newsletter ‘Machine Learnings.’ Sign up for ‘Machine Learnings,’ and Billboard’s other newsletters, here.
Futureverse, an AI music company co-founded by music technology veteran Shara Senderoff, has announced the alpha launch of Jen, its text-to-music AI model. Available for anyone to use on its website, Jen-1 is an AI model that can be safely used by creators, given it was trained on 40 different fully-licensed catalogs, containing about 150 million works in total.
The company’s co-founders, Senderoff and Aaron McDonald, first teased Jen’s launch by releasing a research paper and conducting an interview with Billboard in August 2023. In the interview, Senderoff explained that “Jen is spelled J-E-N because she’s designed to be your friend who goes into the studio with you. She’s a tool.”
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Some of Jen’s capabilities, available at its alpha launch, include the ability to generate 10-45 second song snippets using text prompts. To lengthen the song to a full 3:30-long duration, one can use its “continuation” feature to re-prompt and add on additional segments to the song. With a focus on “its commitment to transparency, compensation and copyright identification,” as its press release states, Jen has made much of its inner workings available to the public via its research papers, including that the model uses “latent diffusion,” the same process used by Stable Diffusion, DALL-E 2, and Imagen to create high quality images. (It is unclear which music AI models use “latent diffusion” as well, given many do not share this information publicly).
Additionally, when works are created with Jen, users receive a JENUINE indicator, verifying that the song was made with Jen at a specific timestamp. To be more specific, this indicator is a cryptographic hash that is then recorded on The Root Network blockchain.
In an effort to work more closely with the music business, Futureverse brought on APG founder/CEO Mike Caren as a founding partner in fall 2023. While its mid-2024 release date makes it a late entrant in the music AI space, the company attributes this delay to making sure its 40 licenses were secured.
For now, Futureverse has declined to comment on which songs are included in their overall training catalog for Jen, but a representative for the company says that among these 40 catalogs includes a number of production libraries. Futureverse says it is also in talks with all major music companies and will have more licenses secured soon for Jen’s beta launch, expected for September 2024. Some licensing partners could be announced as soon as 4-6 weeks from the alpha launch.
In September, Futureverse has more capabilities planned, including longer initial song results, inpainting (the process of filling in missing sections or gaps in a musical piece) and a capability the company calls its “StyleFilter,” allowing users to upload an audio snippet of an instrument or track and then change the genre or timbre of it at the click of a button.
Also in September, Futureverse plans to launch a beat marketplace called R3CORD to go along with JEN. This will let JEN users upload whatever they produce with JEN to the marketplace and sell the works to others.
So far, the U.S. Copyright Office has advised that fully AI generated creations are not protected copyrights. Instead, they are considered “public domain” works and are not eligible to earn royalties like copyrights do, but any human additions made to an AI-assisted work are able to be copyright protected. (Already, this guidance has been applied in the music business in the case of Drake and Sexyy Red’s “U My Everything” which sampled the fully-AI generated sound recording “BBL Drizzy).”
“We have reached a defining moment for the future of the music industry. To ensure artistry maintains the value it deserves, we must commit to honor the creativity and copyrights of the past, while embracing the tools that will shape the next generation of music creation,” says Senderoff. “Jen empowers creators with tools that enhance their creative process. Jen is a collaborator; a friend in the studio that works with you to ideate and iterate. As we bring Jen to market, we are partnering with music rights holders and aligning with the industry at large to deliver what we believe is the most ethical approach to generative AI.”
“We’re incredibly proud of the work that’s gone into building Jen, from our research and technology to a strategy that we continue to develop with artists’ rights top of mind,” says Caren. “We welcome an open dialogue for those who’ve yet to meet Jen. There’s a seat at the table for every rightsholder to participate in building this next chapter of the music industry.”
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