State Champ Radio Ai music
Page: 2
Trending on Billboard
AI was an omnipresent topic at the Music Tectonics conference in Santa Monica, Calif., earlier this week, creeping into seemingly every panel discussion and casual poolside conversation. Everybody can see that AI will transform the music business. That’s a 30,000-foot view. Zoom in, however, and there’s far less certainty about how, exactly, AI will disrupt the status quo.
“Not everybody wants to be a creator” was a frequently heard sentiment. Lucas Cantor Santiago of Mindset Ventures has a particular point of view as a composer. The setup he currently uses to write music would have cost $200,000 15 years ago. Now, somebody can get “basically the same tools” from a trip to the Apple Store. But Cantor Santiago doesn’t believe access to tools has led to more creators. “It’s just caused people like me to start writing music faster, and maybe people who didn’t have classical training to be able to start writing music,” he said on a panel.
Related
AI’s ability to help human creators, not replace them, was a common theme at Music Tectonics. Granted, the conference was heavy on consumer technology brands such as Yamaha, Roland and Fender. Had AI anarchists been invited to speak, there would have been more diversity of thought. But the opinions of people who actually make music for a living carry a lot of weight, as they’re on the front lines of making music that eventually finds an audience. To this crowd, AI slop has little redeeming value and won’t find a meaningful audience.
The historical record doesn’t fully support the idea that AI won’t increase the ranks of creators, though. Greater access to inexpensive production and distribution tools has already transformed the music business. Artists who were previously locked out of nationwide distribution — it was impossible for a DIY artist to get Tower Records to stock their CDs — now have access to tens of millions of consumers through digital distributors and digital service providers (DSPs) such as iTunes and Spotify. “When I owned a record label and house label in Chicago in the ‘80s, there were 100 new records a week,” said Matt Adell, co-founder and COO of Musical AI, on a panel. “When I left [EDM download store] Beatport, there were 27,000 new records a day. There are now over 150,000 new songs a day hitting the DSPs.”
Given easier tools, people are already creating more music. Many of the 150,000 songs a day cited by Adell — or whatever the number is currently — were created by AI. French music streamer Deezer said in September that 28% of tracks uploaded are created wholly by generative AI, underscoring the fact that AI tools could lead to more music being created. Unpopular, long tail music may not attract much attention, but it creates markets where none previously existed. DIY distributors such as DistroKid, CD Baby and TuneCore can operate because production tools are inexpensive — sometimes free — and artists can afford the modest fees to distribute their songs globally.
Related
AI’s biggest impact could be to turn everybody into a small-scale creator. Kristen Bender, senior vp of digital innovation strategy and business development at Universal Music Group (UMG), noted during a panel that 30% to 40% of all music content on social media platforms has been manipulated by AI in some way, suggesting there are more creators than people might think. “We think that AI is going to enable so [much] hyper-personalization and interesting ways to interact with content,” she said.
Along those lines, Liz Moody, a partner at law firm Granderson Des Rochers, described how AI tools will allow fans to interact with artists in new ways. Moody, who worked on Udio’s recent licensing deal with UMG, told the audience Udio could create “a fan-focused experience where fans can work with their favorite artists to make personalized music, maybe with the artist’s voice, or maybe create some mashups between two songs that they love.”
When AI tools first appeared, the initial conversation focused on AI-generated music’s potential to supplant the popularity of human-created songs. But Bender and Moody — who have visibility into where these business models are headed — encouraged people to think smaller. It’s easy to imagine a licensed, industry-sanctioned generative AI platform partnering with well-known artists to create personalized renditions of “Happy Birthday” for their subscribers. But it’s a lot harder to imagine anyone other than the creator wanting to hear their personalized version.
Trending on Billboard
A few years into the debate about AI’s potential economic impact on music, the jury is still out.
AI could be great for the music business, enabling new products and creating new revenue streams for artists and songwriters. Universal Music Group (UMG) has said as much. “We believe the commercial opportunity is potentially very significant,” chief digital officer Michael Nash said during the company’s earnings call on Thursday (Oct. 30), a day after it announced a licensing deal with AI music generator Udio. “These new products and services could constitute an important source of incremental additional new future revenue for artists and songwriters.”
Related
Then again, AI could erode record labels and music publishers’ businesses by flooding the internet with inexpensively made music that takes some — not all — of their market share. Record labels have already lost market share to independent artists in recent years, and AI could be either a continuation or acceleration of existing trends.
Two years ago, analysts at Barclays Research were dismissive of AI-generated music’s threat to the established music business. The general population might have access to music-making tools, but, Barclays reasoned, the quality of the music was poor, and songs created by faceless software housed on computer servers couldn’t create the human connection that listeners desire. Record labels and music publishers could be hurt if social platforms pushed AI music, but the money-saving tactic could run into legal roadblocks, they said. For all the initial hoopla about AI’s ability to upset the status quo, too many questions at the time remained unanswered.
Today, though, Barclays is singing a different tune, and advancements in AI platforms have answered some of their earlier questions. Now, the analysts are more convinced of AI music’s potential to erode record labels’ market share and weaken their financial standing. The quality of music has “improved significantly,” they wrote in a Tuesday (Oct. 28) report titled “AI in Music: Danger Zone,” adding that it’s “hard to differentiate between human music and AI music.” Fans still crave connections with human artists, they wrote, but as opposed to their earlier take, they conceded that AI music represents a threat to the music establishment.
Related
In the Barclays analysts’ view, AI is a mixed bag of gains (such as AI-enabled superfan tiers) and losses (lower royalties from social media platforms’ adoption of cheap AI music). Overall, though, they believe the damage that AI can create will outweigh its benefits. Their bottom line: In an average scenario, UMG takes a 1% hit to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) and Warner Music Group’s EBITDA drops 4%. A worst-case scenario calls for deeper losses. A best-case scenario sees AI providing a boost.
Not everybody is in the Barclays camp, however. Despite advancements in the quality of music produced by AI platforms, analysts at J.P. Morgan are sticking with their opinion from 2023 that AI will not have “a meaningful impact on industry revenues.” Analysts wrote in a note to UMG investors on Monday (Oct. 27) that AI risks have been “negated” and “controlled” by the company’s efforts in recent years to get streaming platforms to prioritize and reward professional artists over mass-produced, low-quality recordings.
Like Barclays, J.P. Morgan believes market erosion is a genuine threat to UMG’s market share. But J.P. Morgan analysts see much more upside in AI. (Notably, J.P. Morgan’s analysis was less thorough; unlike Barclays, it didn’t put a dollar value on AI’s potential impact.) They note that UMG will benefit from AI artists’ need for publishers and record labels (which jibes with Billboard’s assessment of Hallwood Media’s impact on Xania Monet’s on-demand streams). AI can also generate revenue streams from new licensing opportunities and make listening to music more enjoyable, they write.
Related
The major labels and publishers haven’t signed or created AI artists yet, but if they do, J.P. Morgan believes they will benefit from economics that are superior to their deals with human artists and songwriters. It’s not a stretch: To capture some of the market share that has shifted to independent artists, UMG has invested heavily in artist services by building up Virgin Music Group and attempting to acquire Downtown Music Holdings (the European Commission will announce its decision on the proposed merger in February 2026). If AI artists are to compete in the marketplace, they will need the same services that are available to human artists, such as promotion, distribution, copyright administration and public relations.
One thing is certain: Because AI music is in its infancy, trying to figure out its long-term trajectory is difficult. When the music industry began navigating the shift from physical to digital in the late ‘90s, few people could have guessed that the marketplace of 2025 would be dominated by subscription royalties and that download revenue would be almost nonexistent. When Napster launched in 1999, nearly a decade before the iPhone debuted, imagining the influence of an app like TikTok would have been nearly impossible. Music companies got to this point by enforcing the value of their intellectual property through a few decades of licensing agreements and lawsuits.
In the near term, expect more deals like UMG’s partnership with Udio. Over the long term, expect to be surprised.
Trending on Billboard
Music Artists Coalition (MAC), a nonprofit dedicated to advocating for music creators, has responded to Universal Music Group’s new AI deal with Udio, asking questions about how artists will be compensated. “We’re cautiously optimistic but insistent on details,” said Jordan Bromley, leader at Manatt Entertainment and board member of MAC, in a press release put out by MAC on Friday (Oct. 31).
The UMG-Udio deal, which was announced Wednesday night (Oct. 29), is multifaceted. First, it involves a “compensatory” legal settlement for UMG, which sued Udio last summer, along with the other major music companies, for copyright infringement of their sound recordings during Udio’s training process. (Sony and Warner’s lawsuit against Udio is ongoing.)
Related
It also provides go-forward licensing agreements for UMG’s recorded music and publishing assets, which is said to open up a new revenue stream for the company and its signees who decide to opt in. Those artists and songwriters who participate will be compensated for both the training process of the AI model and for its outputs, according to a source close to the deal.
As part of the agreement, Udio plans to pivot its offerings significantly. In 2026, the company will launch a new platform “powered by new cutting-edge generative AI technology that will be trained on authorized and licensed music. The new subscription service will transform the user engagement experience, creating a licensed and protected environment to customize, stream and share music responsibly, on the Udio platform.” This will include new tools that let fans remix, mashup and create songs in the style of participating UMG artists. It will also allow fans to use UMG artist voice models.
Opting into the Udio deal is not a one-size-fits-all approach. According to a recent interview with Udio CEO Andrew Sanchez about the deal, the company “[has] built and invested an absolutely enormous amount into controls. Controls over how artists’ songs can be used, how their styles can be used, really granular controls…One of the things that you’ll see is we’re going to launch with a set of features that has a spectrum of freedom that the artist can control.”
Related
One area that Sanchez and UMG’s announcement about the deal did not provide clarity on was how exactly participating artists will be compensated. This is why MAC put out a press release on Friday (Oct. 31) asking exactly what is going on — and noting the organization is only “cautiously optimistic” about the agreement.
As Irving Azoff, top artist manager, entrepreneur, board member and founder of MAC, put it in the announcement: “Every technological advance offers opportunity, but we have to make sure it doesn’t come at the expense of the people who actually create the music — artists and songwriters. We’ve seen this before — everyone talks about ‘partnership,’ but artists end up on the sidelines with scraps. Artists must have creative control, fair compensation and clarity about deals being done based on their catalogs.”
The press release goes on to say that while MAC appreciates that the deal is “opt-in” and with “granular control,” the organization still has questions, which are quoted below:
“Meaningful consent: How do artists actually control what uses they authorize? What happens when multiple songwriters or performers on a single song disagree about participation?”
“Revenue splits: What percentage of revenue goes to artists versus the label versus the AI company when their music is used to train models or generate new works?”
“Data and deal transparency: Was settlement money paid? How will that be distributed to artists? Will artists’ pay-outs for a new revenue stream just be applied to old unrecouped balances? Will artists see exactly how their work is being used within the AI system and have ongoing visibility into its use?”
Related
“Artist opt-in sounds promising, but participation without fair compensation isn’t partnership; it’s just permission,” said Ron Gubitz, MAC’s executive director, in the press release. “Artists create the work that makes these AI systems possible. They deserve both control over how their work is used and appropriate compensation for its value generation. It’s the three C’s: consent, compensation, and clarity.”
“The music industry is at a crossroads,” Gubitz added. “The decisions being made right now will shape how music gets created, distributed, and monetized for decades to come. That’s exactly why MAC exists — to ensure artists have a seat at the table when those decisions are made.”
Bromley added: “True partnership requires appropriate oversight and remuneration for all involved parties. The industry needs to get this right — for artists, for fans, and for the future of music itself.”
Trending on Billboard
On Wednesday night (Oct. 29), Universal Music Group (UMG) and AI music company Udio announced they had reached a strategic agreement. Importantly, this agreement not only settled UMG’s involvement in the massive copyright infringement litigation the major labels brought against Udio and another AI music company, Suno, last summer, but also paved the way for the two companies to “collaborate on an innovative, new commercial music creation, consumption and streaming experience,” according to the announcement.
Related
The newly revamped version of Udio is set to debut in 2026, and it will feature fully-licensed UMG sound recordings and publishing assets that are totally controlled by UMG — but only those from artists that choose to participate.
Here, Billboard looks at the deal more deeply and answers some questions that have arisen in the wake of the first-of-its-kind agreement.
Why did UMG and Udio decide to come together and settle this week?
It’s hard to know exactly what happened behind closed doors, but reports that the major music companies had been in talks to settle with Udio — and Suno, which was also sued in a nearly identical lawsuit by the majors — have been circulating since this summer, making it relatively unsurprising to hear that at least one deal has been finalized.
One clue as to why there was incentive to settle here comes from a recent Barclays Research report on the majors’ lawsuits against the AI music firms, which stated that it could be “prohibitively expensive to lose” for Udio, much more than Suno, given the two firms had raised $10 million and $125 million, respectively, at the time the report was published on Tuesday (Oct. 28). Even a tough settlement, the report states, “would likely only mean the disappearance of Udio.”
The timing of the press release about the UMG-Udio deal also arrived the night before UMG’s Q3 earnings call, which took place yesterday (Oct. 30). The company has a history of announcing big news just before earnings calls in general, including one instance when UMG reached an agreement with TikTok the night before earnings in 2024 after a three-month standoff.
Related
What exactly will this 2026 version of Udio entail?
The new version of Udio will feature a number of tools to allow users to remix, mash up and riff on the songs of participating UMG artists. Users will also be able to create songs in the style of participating artists and use some artists’ voices on songs.
According to Udio CEO Andrew Sanchez, who spoke to Billboard just after the deal was announced, “[Udio is] going to involve all kinds of AI models, like a base model… The best way to explain it, [is it] will have sort of like flavors of the model that will be specific to particular styles or artists or genres. And this, again, provides an enormous amount of control.”
How can UMG artists and songwriters participate, and can they get paid for that?
Yes, UMG artists and songwriters will be remunerated for participating in Udio. According to a source close to the deal, this will include financial rewards for both the training process of the AI model and for its outputs. The details of exactly how that payment will work beyond this are unclear. Sanchez declined to answer a question about whether the model uses attribution (tracing back which songs in a training dataset influenced the outputs of a model) or digital proxies (a selected benchmark, like streaming performance, used to determine the popularity of songs in a dataset against others overall) as a way to determine payment — two of the most often proposed methods of AI licensing remuneration.
This answer is also made more complicated when considering the breadth of AI tools Udio plans to offer on its service. Importantly, artists can pick and choose exactly which Udio tools they “opt-in” to: “We’re going to launch with a set of features that has a spectrum of freedom that the artist can control,” Sanchez said. “There are some features that will be available to users that will be more restrictive in what they can do with their artists or their songs. And then there will be others that are more permissive. The whole point of it is not only education but just meeting artists at the levels they’re comfortable with.”
Related
Who is the target audience for the newly revamped Udio?
According to Sanchez, it’s fans: “We want to build a community of superfans around creation. As we say internally, it’s connection through creation — whether that’s with artists or that connection with other music fans. We want to lean into that. I think it’s going to be a huge asset for artists and fandoms.”
Are Sony and Warner still pursuing their lawsuits against Udio?
Yes, for now. UMG’s settlement and deal with Udio does not impact Sony Music and Warner Music Group’s lawsuit against Udio for widespread copyright infringement. While some industry onlookers posit that Sony and Warner are more encouraged to settle now that UMG is no longer pursuing litigation against Udio, there’s no indication that these companies are definitely planning to do so yet.
Why are some Udio users upset about this deal?
By doing this deal with UMG, Udio has agreed to a major pivot in its offering to users. Currently, the site is known for helping users make songs from simple text prompts, which they can then export and upload to streaming services, share on social media — or whatever they want to do.
Users are particularly upset because, as part of this deal with UMG, Udio immediately removed its users’ ability to download their work from the service. Angry subscribers gathered on a subreddit to complain. “This feels lie an absolute betrayal,” wrote one user. “I’ve spent hundreds of $$$ and countless hours building tracks with this tool,” wrote another. “No one warned us that one day, we wouldn’t even be able to access our own music. You can’t just pull the plug and call that a ‘transition.’”
Related
In a statement to Billboard on Thursday (Oct. 30), an Udio spokesperson said that disabling exports on the platform is “a difficult but necessary step to support the next phase of the platform and the new experiences ahead.” On Friday (Oct. 31), Udio relented slightly, writing on Reddit that starting Monday (Nov. 3), the platform will give users a 48-hour window to download their existing songs — and that any songs downloaded during that time will be covered by the terms of service that existed before the UMG deal was signed.
The move to restrict downloads in the long term may prove to be more than just an inconvenience for users — Udio could also be hit with legal claims over it. There could be arguments made that disabling downloads was a breach of the subscription contract that Udio signed with users, or that Udio falsely advertised its services in violation of consumer protection laws. It wouldn’t be the first time this has happened in recent memory: Just last year, Amazon Prime users brought claims like this over changes to the cost of ad-free movie and TV streaming for subscribers.
Trending on Billboard
Udio’s licensing deal with Universal Music Group (UMG) has prompted backlash from users angry that the AI platform abruptly disabled downloading — and some are already floating the idea of legal action.
The landmark deal, announced on Wednesday (Oct. 29), ends UMG’s involvement in copyright litigation against Udio and lays the groundwork for a new version of the platform trained on licensed music. The catch: Udio will now be a “walled garden” in which users can only stream their AI creations on the platform, with no ability to export and distribute their works.
Related
While this new version of Udio isn’t launching until 2026, the company immediately disabled all downloading on Wednesday — a move that has many users up in arms, especially on the r/udiomusic Reddit page.
“This feels like an absolute betrayal,” wrote one Reddit user.
“I’ve spent hundreds of $$$ and countless hours building tracks with this tool,” wrote another. “No one warned us that one day, we wouldn’t even be able to access our own music. You can’t just pull the plug and call that a ‘transition.’”
Udio offers both monthly and annual subscription plans. A Standard plan costs either $10 per month or $96 billed annually, and a Pro plan comes out to either $30 per month or $288 a year.
One unlucky Reddit user commented on Thursday (Oct. 30) that they paid for an annual subscription the day that Udio announced the UMG deal and took away download capabilities.
“I’m absolutely livid,” the user wrote. “The sole reason I paid for the service was to produce music to soundtrack short films for the students in my high school media class. Now no downloads?? This is the worst and most disgusting fraud I have ever seen. I don’t even care about the music, I just want my money.”
Related
In a statement to Billboard on Thursday, an Udio spokesperson said that disabling downloads is “a difficult but necessary step to support the next phase of the platform and the new experiences ahead.”
“We hate having to remove this functionality and did not make the decision lightly,” said the spokesperson. “To ease the transition, Udio is adding 1,200 credits to all Pro and Standard plans, increasing the Pro plan’s song creation limit to 10, and providing all subscribers with a one-time bonus of 1,000 non-expiring credits.”
On Reddit, Udio users are already chatting about potential recourse. Some comments say disgruntled users should ask Udio directly for refunds, while others suggest that individuals who’ve recently bought subscriptions contact their banks to cancel the charges.
Elsewhere on the Reddit page, as well as on other social media platforms like LinkedIn, users are floating the idea of litigation.
“What you have committed is fraud. Just so you understand,” wrote one user. “You may not feel any legal ramifications immediately, but not everyone who used your platform is without resources.”
Related
Numerous accounts have been posting Udio’s terms of service and encouraging others to send emails to the company formally opting out of provisions that could limit their legal options — namely, a clause requiring that all claims be brought in private, individual arbitration rather than in public court as a class action.
While Udio’s terms of service do indeed allow users to opt out of mandatory arbitration, opt-out notices must be sent within 30 days of registering for the service. “Otherwise, you shall be bound to arbitrate disputes on a non-class basis in accordance with these terms,” the fine print reads.
Whether ultimately brought in arbitration or in a courthouse, there are a number of potential legal claims that disgruntled Udio users might assert. There could be arguments made that disabling downloads constituted a breach of the subscription contract that Udio signed with users, or that Udio falsely advertised its services in violation of consumer protection laws. Just last year, Amazon Prime users brought such claims over changes to the cost of ad-free movie and TV streaming for subscribers.
Whether such legal claims could actually be successful, however, would depend on a judge’s interpretation of the fine print in Udio’s subscription agreement. The Amazon case, for example, was dismissed this summer after a federal judge found that Prime subscription contracts are written to give the retail giant leeway to change the terms.
Trending on Billboard
On Wednesday (Oct. 29), Universal Music Group came to a landmark agreement with AI music company Udio. The deal ends UMG’s involvement in the lawsuit against Udio, which it filed last summer with the two other major music companies — Sony Music and Warner Music Group. In the lawsuit, the labels accused Udio of infringing on its copyrighted sound recordings to train its AI music model, which can generate realistic songs in seconds.
Wednesday’s deal went beyond a “compensatory” legal settlement for UMG and Udio, as stated in the press release; it also provides licensing agreements for UMG’s recorded music and publishing assets, creating a new revenue stream for the company and its signees. Participating UMG artists and songwriters will be rewarded for both the training process of the AI model and for its outputs, according to a source close to the deal.
Related
The deal also means that Udio will significantly revamp its existing business. In 2026, Udio and UMG plan to work together to launch a new collaborative platform that will combine music creation with streaming capabilities. According to the press release, the new platform will be “powered by new cutting-edge generative AI technology that will be trained on authorized and licensed music. The new subscription service will transform the user engagement experience, creating a licensed and protected environment to customize, stream and share music responsibly, on the Udio platform.”
The source close to the deal says that Udio users will not be able to export works made within Udio’s forthcoming platform. Instead, they can enjoy their creations within the service, which will be geared towards superfans.
To talk about the new deal, along with Udio’s plans for 2026, Billboard got on the phone with Udio CEO Andrew Sanchez minutes after the deal was announced. You can read the Q&A below.
What was the turning point in negotiations with UMG when you felt like both companies could actually become partners?
Sanchez: We share a really similar vision about what we want to do. The thing that I think is going to be the most extraordinary thing for the music industry in general is when people can do things with their favorite artists and their favorite music. Actually, I think that we had agreements with UMG across the board on this. We said, “Look, we want the human to be centered in this. We want the AI to empower human creators. And we also think, by the way, that that’s actually going to really expand the market.” There actually was a lot of — we had a philosophical alignment on that throughout the whole process. And then the question was, it’s incredibly complex. It’s not something [where] we can pull something off the shelf. We had to actually walk through and figure out how it would all work, and that’s just based on time.
How long did your negotiations with UMG last?
Many months.
One of the things that I thought was really interesting in the press release about this deal is that it notes that Udio will be a “creation, consumption and streaming” destination. Right now, I think of Udio as a place for creation. Can you provide more insight about your vision for this forthcoming 2026 platform with UMG that will do it all?
You’re a keen reader. We believe there’s an incredibly exciting market that combines creation and consumption, both of human-generated songs and of AI-generated songs. We are building a platform that is going to allow you to engage in both of those activities, because that’s where we think the market and users want to go. By the way, we also think that’s the way that artists are going to benefit from this enormously. Because if you can go and you can do stuff with your favorite artists, make a song in their style or remix [a] favorite song, you’re also going to listen to their own music. And we want to be able to meet the users and provide them one place to do that.
It sounds like some of the capabilities you’ll provide with this new platform include mash-ups, remixes and speed controls of existing music. There’s already a few things on the market that do these sorts of things — MashApp, Hook and even Spotify sounds like it’s working on tools like that. How will you make Udio stand out from the pack?
There’s a couple of ways. It’s not just remixing and mashing up. It’s also creating in the style of artists with their opt-in. There’s a huge amount of desire for this, and we know that when we do this the right way with the artist, a huge amount of value will be made for the fan and revenue for the artist.
If I were to say I want to make a pop ballad in the style of Taylor Swift, I can now do that because it’s all licensed?
Well, I don’t want to get specific with artists. It’s their choice, but yeah, in the new service, you would be able to do that, and you’d be able to make extraordinary music. I mean, our model is already really powerful. You can imagine what it’s like when you get to do it directly with the artist’s input and their voice and style, and then the artist gets to benefit from that in multiple ways. They get the financial upside from it. They can increase their brand. And the user gets to go deeper in their connection with you as a fan.
Can users export what they make in Udio to streaming services now?
Not now. That’s an important component of this deal. As we’re entering this transition period, when we’re building out our new models and functionality, you’re not able to have songs leave the platform.
Sony and Warner still have active lawsuits against Udio. Are you confident that they will come to the table now that you’ve reached a deal with UMG?
This is something I need to pass on answering.
There are three parts to this. You have your “compensatory” deal with UMG that settles the lawsuit. Then you also have licenses with UMG on the publishing and recorded music side for this future Udio platform. Does this first part mean you are now retroactively paying UMG for the licensing of their recordings for training data?
To be honest, I think I’d be a little bit over my skis on this, and there’s a lot of legal complexity around that. I don’t think I’m in a position to actually speak about that directly.
Now that you have publishing and recorded music licenses in place with UMG, how does the process of compensating participating artists work? Are you doing a system of attribution or digital proxies for payment?
I wish I could give more details about this right now, but it’s something that we have a clear plan for. This is a trade secret for the moment.
Given this past history with this lawsuit, I imagine that a number of artists will be hesitant about opting in and working with your team. How do you plan to reassure UMG artists who might be hesitant but are interested in diving into AI?
So I think the way to do this is to say you have control, right? We’re very clear about this: If you want to participate, that’s great. If you’re unsure about participating, call me, I’ll sit down with you, and we will talk about it. Call Universal. They’ve been working and thinking about this alongside us. We’ve built and invested an absolutely enormous amount into controls. Controls over how artists’ songs can be used, how their styles can be used, really granular controls. And I think that the way for artists to become comfortable with this is to just talk to me or anyone on the team, and we can walk them through what’s possible.
One of the things that you’ll see is we’re going to launch with a set of features that has a spectrum of freedom that the artist can control. There are some features that will be available to users that will be more restrictive in what they can do with their artists or their songs. And then there will be others that are more permissive. The whole point of it is not only education but just meeting artists at the levels they’re comfortable with.
I think this is something that, when done right, can bring an enormous amount of interest and fan engagement. By the way, data is a huge thing for artists. So imagine that you’re an artist, you’re a hip-hop artist, people are on the platform, and 60% or 70% of them are remixing your songs or using your style in a country song. That’s amazing information that we will provide artists in the back end. They’re going to have this new insight into what people like and want. And I also hope that will inform their own music making.
Interesting. So it sounds like artists aren’t just doing a blanket opt-in here. It’s more granular, and artists can pick and choose what they want to say yes to?
One hundred percent. I also think what we’ll see is, artists at different points in their career are going to also have different views on this — when they’re trying to break, and they want to get their name out there, you know, versus when they’re at the peak of their career. We are ready to learn about that, and we’ll meet them where they’re at.
Since this is a destination for creation and streaming, it feels like an interactive product. Do you have any plans to integrate social features into this, too?
Yeah, for sure. I think that we want to build a community of superfans around creation. As we say internally, it’s connection through creation — whether that’s with artists or that connection with other music fans. We want to lean into that. I think it’s going to be a huge asset for artists and fandoms.
So this platform will now include artists’ voice models, correct?
It’s going to involve all kinds of AI models, like a base model, and then we will have a specific…it’s hard to describe. The best way to explain it, [is it] will have sort of like flavors of the model that will be specific to particular styles or artists or genres. And this, again, provides an enormous amount of control.
Who is your ideal user base for this, since it’s a departure from what you’re doing right now?
I think our ideal user is a passionate music fan who maybe hasn’t created yet, but has the impulse to do so. And if they’re given tools, or they’re given experiences that are straightforward, and they’re given a community that they can engage with, they’re going to want to go deeper. I think that people are going to create songs, or there’ll be songs for you made by people in the communities that you love. I think it’ll be an interesting combination of creation and consumption. I think it goes towards people who are just deep music lovers, who want to go further than is possible today, further than is possible on any of the normal forms of music consumption that we have right now.
Now that Udio is moving forward with this partnership with UMG, I’m wondering, how do you feel this deal can help differentiate the direction that Udio is going in versus Suno, since so many people have lumped the two companies together for so long?
I think that we’re clearly building into a totally new space. I mean, what I’ve described to you isn’t even a question of Udio versus other players. Today, we are breaking new ground on a market that combines new forms of AI and artist interaction — creation and consumption. We’re making a new market here, which we think is an enormous one. I think that we’re already incredibly differentiated just today, just by saying all of this.
Anything else to add?
Partnership is absolutely vital to doing this. This has to be done with artists and songwriters and rights holders, and we are super thrilled about this announcement today, and we want to do this with other artists across the board. So we’re ready to build alongside the entire user community.
Trending on Billboard
Universal Music Group (UMG) and Udio, one of the top AI music models on the market, have announced a strategic agreement, thereby settling UMG’s copyright infringement litigation against Udio. Now, a press release from UMG states that the two companies will also “collaborate on an innovative, new commercial music creation, consumption and streaming experience.”
This deal includes a compensatory legal settlement for UMG, which sued Udio and its rival Suno with the two other major music companies in June 2024, accusing the two platforms of copyright infringement on an “almost unimaginable scale.” At the time, Suno and Udio were using UMG and the other majors’ copyrighted sound recordings to train their models, which could make realistic songs at the click of a button, without a license in place. (Sony Music and Warner Music Group are still involved in the lawsuit against Udio and Suno).
Related
According to the press release, this deal goes beyond just settling the lawsuit — it also provides licensing agreements for recorded music and publishing to UMG, creating a new revenue stream for the company and its signees. Notably, the lawsuit was only focused on the apparent infringement of UMG’s sound recordings, so this now provides a licensing framework for not just sound records but songs as well. Participating UMG artists and writers will be rewarded for both the training process of the AI model and for its outputs, according to a source close to the deal.
For now, Udio’s existing model will remain available for users as the AI company transitions over to this new model with UMG. Any song created with Udio’s existing model will be “controlled within a walled garden,” according to the release, and there are already amendments to Udio in place to make sure that all songs created with it are fingerprinted, filtered and more. According to a source close to the deal, users are not able to export their Udio songs for now.
The new collaborative platform will be launched in 2026, and UMG artists and songwriters can participate in it on an opt-in basis. The press release states it will be “powered by new cutting-edge generative AI technology that will be trained on authorized and licensed music. The new subscription service will transform the user engagement experience, creating a licensed and protected environment to customize, stream and share music responsibly, on the Udio platform.” The source close to the deal adds that works made within Udio’s forthcoming platform cannot be exported. Instead, users can enjoy their creations within the service, which will be geared towards fans. Some capabilities are said to include mashups, remixes and tempo changes to existing, licensed works as well as voice swapping with UMG artists’ voices who have chosen to make their vocals that available to users.
Related
This marks UMG’s latest collaboration with an AI music company, and certainly its biggest announcement to date. In the past few years, UMG has struck deals with “responsible” AI music companies, as the company often calls them, including KLAY, SoundLabs and Pro-Rada. More deals between UMG and AI companies are expected to arrive in the coming days.
“We couldn’t be more thrilled about this collaboration and the opportunity to work alongside UMG to redefine how AI empowers artists and fans,” said Andrew Sanchez, co-founder & CEO of Udio, in a statement. “This moment brings to life everything we’ve been building toward — uniting AI and the music industry in a way that truly champions artists. Together, we’re building the technological and business landscape that will fundamentally expand what’s possible in music creation and engagement.”
Lucian Grainge, chairman and CEO of UMG, said, “These new agreements with Udio demonstrate our commitment to do what’s right by our artists and songwriters, whether that means embracing new technologies, developing new business models, diversifying revenue streams or beyond. We look forward to working with Andrew who shares our belief that together, we can foster a healthy commercial AI ecosystem in which artists, songwriters, music companies and technology companies can all flourish and create incredible experiences for fans.”
Trending on Billboard ASCAP, BMI and SOCAN have all adopted policies to accept registrations of musical compositions partially generated using artificial intelligence (AI) tools, the PROs jointly announced Tuesday (Oct. 28), while noting that they will continue to reject registrations of fully AI-generated works. According to a press release, all three PROs define a partially […]
Trending on Billboard
The Velvet Sundown is an AI-generated rock four-piece that captured worldwide attention in June after word of the surreptitiously computer-made music spread online. The music is a mix of classic rock, folk and psychedelic Americana. The album’s surrealist artwork evokes Salvador Dali during a stint in the high desert of the American Southwest. The band came replete with an AI-generated press photo and a halfway believable bio.
News of The Velvet Sundown’s AI origins spread like wildfire, and U.S. on-demand streams quickly jumped to approximately 140,000 per week, according to Luminate. The dramatic rise revealed strong curiosity about a band with a fully formed concept but no human creativity. Interest reached a fever pitch the following week when weekly on-demand streams jumped to 760,000. That turned out to be the band’s high-water mark.
Related
Streaming activity dropped 25% the following week, and another 7% the week after. Then interest in The Velvet Sundown fell off a cliff. Weekly streams plunged 48%, then 34%, and then another 25%. Six weeks after hitting its streaming pinnacle, The Velvet Sundown’s weekly on-demand streams were just 15% of its peak number. In another nine weeks, those streams were just 7% of the peak week.
The band’s Google search traffic followed a remarkably similar trajectory. The number of searches for “The Velvet Sundown” peaked the same week that on-demand streams did, and then steadily dropped.
When plotted on a chart, The Velvet Sundown’s weekly U.S. on-demand streams and U.S. Google search traffic look like one-half of a seismometer after a massive earthquake. A sharp peak of curiosity — measured in streams and searches — was followed by a cliff of disinterest.
The shape of the curve says a great deal about both The Velvet Sundown and AI music in general. If AI music is fortunate enough to find an audience, it won’t be easy to keep listeners engaged. Maintaining and building an audience is the domain of record labels, artist managers and armies of service providers and consultants. People see chart positions, news appearances and social media mentions, but they don’t see the behind-the-scenes blocking and tackling that creates all that visibility. The Velvet Sundown had the benefit of being one of the first AI artists most people encountered. Once that novelty wore off, it was left to compete with far more organized, more resourceful artists.
Related
Enter Xania Monet, an AI-based R&B artist who signed a multi-million-dollar deal with Hallwood Media in September. Monet is the creation of Mississippi artist Telisha Jones, who used AI music platform Suno to create songs based on lyrics she penned herself. Monet could have had an experience similar to The Velvet Sundown’s, but she took a different path.
When Billboard broke the news about Monet’s signing, a wave of media attention drove her on-demand streams and Google search traffic to a peak in mid-September. The week after the peak, Monet’s streams fell 24% — remarkably close to The Velvet Sundown’s 25% decline after its peak week. That could have been the beginning of a steep drop following the height of the public’s curiosity. Instead, Monet’s weekly streams stopped their downward decline and leveled off over the last three weeks. So why didn’t Monet suffer the same fate as The Velvet Sundown?
Velvet Sundown, Xania Monet
Billboard
A week after Monet’s streams hit their apex, Hallwood Media started securing radio play for her songs. In the first week — when her streams fell 24% — Monet’s songs were played just twice on broadcast radio, according to Luminate. But weekly spins rose to 109 the next week, then climbed to 423 and 485 in the next two weeks. By the most recent week (the period ended Oct. 16), Monet had something The Velvet Sundown didn’t: an aggregate radio audience of more than 1 million listeners.
Placed side by side, the charts representing The Velvet Sundown and Xania Monet show the difference between existing outside of the traditional music business and operating within it. Radio play helped turn Monet away from the cliff of disinterest and put her on a different trajectory. Without promotion, both radio and digital, it can be exceedingly difficult for any artist to maintain momentum — much less one created with AI.
Trending on Billboard
A lot is changing at Spotify. In recent weeks, the company announced its founder and CEO, Daniel Ek, is stepping down from the CEO post (he will stay on Spotify’s chairman); it announced plans to develop generative AI music models with the support of the music industry; it updated its AI policies; it finally launched lossless audio; it updated its free tier; it forged new deals with a number of top music companies; and the company rolled out a number of new features, like direct messaging and “Mix With Spotify.”
The changes are a lot to keep track of, so on this week’s episode of Billboard’s new music business podcast, On the Record w/ Kristin Robinson, Spotify’s global head of marketing and policy, music business, Sam Duboff, joins to explain how the company is evolving, from a static destination for music consumption to what he calls “a place where fans can experience the whole world of an artist.”
Related
Duboff is one of the executives who determines how Spotify will handle the growing presence of AI music on its platform. He also is key in the development of Spotify for Artists, the company’s hub for musicians that enables them to manage their artist profiles and connect with fans.
Below is an excerpt of Billboard’s wide-ranging conversation with Duboff on this week’s episode of On the Record, focusing on its treatment of AI music on the platform.
Watch or listen to the full episode of On the Record on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts here, or watch it below.
I wanted to hear a little bit more about the fact that y’all are developing generative AI with the consent of many players in the music industry. There isn’t much information out there, so what is going on?
Duboff: We have been hearing from artists and their teams for a few years now that merging music AI tech products don’t feel like they’re built for them, not built for the power of their businesses, their careers, their existing fan bases. So we recently announced we’re collaborating with some of our top industry partners, across major labels and indies, to collaboratively develop artist-first, responsible AI music products.
So what would that look like?
We want to do this in consultation with the industry. People talk to artists about it, songwriters about it, and it feels like a lot of principles about AI and music and what these should look like. It’s happening in real time. So we didn’t want to wait until we have a product ready for a big launch to start talking about how we’re going to build AI products. We want to talk now, while we see lots of other folks in the industry are investing in the space, to be clear about our principles and how we’re gonna work with the industry for any product we build. So we’re looking at four key principles we outlined.
Related
First, [we have forged] upfront agreements with the music industry. [We are] not using tons of music [without permission] and asking for forgiveness later. Second, we wanna make sure artists, songwriters, rights holders have agency and choice about how their music does or doesn’t participate in these tools. They should have control and choice around how fans can or can’t interact with the music using AI. Third, we will always have proper monetization and compensation built in. So artists, songwriters, right holders [are] always compensated for all uses of their work [and] properly credited transparently. We’ll have an eye towards building new revenue streams for the music industry, so not just splitting up the existing royalty pool. We think that could be really important for powering what the next stage of the music industry looks like. Fourth, and really important to us, when we think about our role right now in music, is we want to build AI music products that deepen existing artist-fan connections. With 700 million monthly listeners coming to Spotify already, to listen to their favorite artists, we can play this really unique role where we build tools and help fans go deeper with their favorite artists and connect with their favorite artists in new ways, and make sure AI tools aren’t there to kind of compete with artists or to try to replace human artistry.
I know it is still very preliminary, but you talked about how this will increase the connection between fans and artists. Tell me if I’m off base, but it kind of sounds more like Spotify is leaning towards AI-powered remixing of current songs, rather than a model that generates a new song from scratch, like Suno or Udio, right?
Yeah. I think we see our role as the biggest streaming home for professional artists today. We facilitate those connections between artists and fans through their music already. So we think we’re best positioned to help have AI power this next stage of the industry. In some ways, it’s just in that space of existing artists and connections and building on artists’ catalogs with their consent. Yeah, not tools that are built to compete or kind of siphon off [royalties] from parts of the industry.
Related
To me, this signals a shift for Spotify. Spotify has always been the final destination for listening. This now feels like it’s a more playful, interactive music creation tool. Do you see Spotify continuing to expand from being the place for static streaming?
Over the past few years, we’ve been evolving Spotify from a place that’s just about the music to giving artists all these tools to share the world around their music. So three, four or five years ago, on Spotify, you get an artist profile with some pictures and canvases [looping visuals paired to songs]. It was mostly just about the music, and then you’d have to go to social media or elsewhere to experience the artist’s broader world. Where we’ve been focusing is bringing in artist clips so that artists can share 30-second videos, sharing the meaning of their songs, music videos, live performance videos, which we’ve launched in 100 countries outside the U.S. We’re working to bring that to the U.S. [There are] countdown pages that build up your album release. You can sell your merch in advance. We’re seeing artists use that in really creative ways. So we’ve already been on this journey of making Spotify a place where fans can experience the whole world of an artist. These AI music principles are an extension of that philosophy.
Spotify has also recently updated its policies on AI music. This included a note that the service has removed “75 million spammy tracks.” I’ve seen some outlets post stories about this figure incorrectly, calling it 75 million AI tracks, but it feels like the word “spammy” is intentional, referring to both AI spam and human-made spam. Can you explain what Spotify meant by this?
We’ve definitely seen modern Gen AI tools increase the scale of spam, and so certainly AI played a role in this scale. Not so long ago, there weren’t even 75 million tracks on streaming services, and now, we’re removing that many, but yeah, we’re working to identify spam, regardless of whether AI’s part of the creative process or not.
Related
Spotify is also working with DDEX to create a standardized way to disclose exactly how AI is used in the music creation process. It feels like a step in the right direction to create a standard, but if I’m a bad actor, why would I self-disclose? I probably wouldn’t.
We see this as the first step. No matter what the long-term solution is going to be, of the system of incentives and deterrence that will get people to disclose, the starting point has to be shared language through the existing supply chain of music about what the formatting of that will be.
But I think you do see already a lot of artists, songwriters, producers, starting to talk about how they’re using AI more often. So you see the K-Pop Demon Hunters songwriter who talked about brainstorming with Chat-GPT when he wrote “Soda Pop” through to Brenda Lee using AI to translate “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” into Spanish, but still her voice. It was so cool, but it may have been confusing for Spanish listeners, if they thought Brenda Lee or any artist spoke a language they don’t speak. Now, [with the DDEX partnership] it will be really cool for them to know transparently [exactly how AI was used.]
When Spotify came out with these policies, it did feel like a start, but I heard from some people that they felt it didn’t go far enough. So, what do you say to those who feel like it’s not going far enough?
It’s early days for AI tech. I know it feels like it’s moving fast, but consumption of AI-generated music’s insanely low. We have some time for artists, songwriters, producers to take the lead in figuring out how they want to use these tools. We don’t want to act like we know where AI music’s headed and exactly every policy and role we need to future-proof for the next two or three years. But also, we didn’t just want to wait and do nothing. Some areas we all can agree now that we need to act now, no matter where AI tech heads. We think it’s going to be necessary to have great systems in place to stamp out spam, deception, impersonation. So that’s our starting point. We try to be upfront. We see these as first, critical early steps. There’s more to come.
Related
French streaming service Deezer reported recently that 28% of daily uploaded songs are fully AI-generated. That’s a shockingly high number. At Spotify, have you seen the same figures?
AI detection tech isn’t really foolproof yet. You know, every streaming service has pretty much an integral catalog. We have no reason to disbelieve it’s a similar amount on any streaming service. That said, I think they shared the point that .5% of streams is all those songs were getting. We’ve tried a few different tactics to test that — different detection tech, testing out different proxies — to understand how much prompt-generated music may be listened to on Spotify, and we find it is way lower than .5% in the share of streams, in total consumption. So I know sometimes it feels scary when you see those upload percentages…but yeah, there’s a lot of uploads [of AI music.] We’re doing a lot of work to release that kind of spam, where there are mass uploads that can add up to those kinds of percentages, but keeping a close eye on the part that actually matters, which is, are listeners listening to it? Is it generating royalties?
Consumption being really low makes me think that it must be a burden on streaming services to hold all of this music, especially when no one’s listening to it. Would Spotify ever remove tracks that are just getting absolutely no traction?
I don’t think so. Whether they’re AI or otherwise, people upload their music to streaming services for all different reasons. I have family members that upload music to send to family and friends. That’s a great thing at Spotify, [where] we are focused on emerging and professional artists. Our policies are in service of professional artists and emerging artists on their way to that. So we take on the burden of how many songs are uploaded, and certainly the overwhelming majority of songs aren’t getting streamed much. I still think it’s really important for there to be this open outlet.
Related
Is this a cloud storage issue? I have no idea how big these songs are to hold onto.
Maybe someday, with AI scale, it will be.
Earlier this year, I spoke to Spotify’s global head of editorial, Sulinna Ong, and I asked her about whether or not she would ever forbid AI tracks from living on Spotify editorial playlists. She didn’t have a clear answer at that moment — it wasn’t a yes or a no, so I wanted to ask again. Could you ever imagine fully AI-generated tracks living on a Spotify playlist?
It’s a hard question, because I think we recognize AI music as a spectrum… I think what you’re getting at is completely prompt-generated music without any human input. Is there some world where listener behavior really changes, and there’s huge musical, cultural relevance from music that doesn’t spam, deceive or impersonate, but somehow finds an audience, [that] could make it on to a viral hits sort of playlist? I can’t speak for their team, but fundamentally, 100% of the focus of our editorial efforts is helping to identify, uplift [and] develop the careers of professional artists who are making amazing music. So it’s always hard to answer that question in absolutes, but certainly that’s not the focus of anyone at Spotify, or, I think, any streaming service.
