artifical intelligence
In the future, every technology company will have a celebrity advisor.
The latest is Timbaland, who is working with the generative AI company Suno on “day-to-day product development and strategic creative direction,” according to a late-October announcement. Timbaland is a hip-hop and R&B icon — a star songwriter, an innovative producer and a compelling performer. (His performance at the June Songwriters Hall of Fame gala was stunning.) As much of a genius as Timbaland is, however, it seems reasonable to wonder where he’s going to find the time for software development.
It also seems reasonable to wonder whether Suno hired him for more than his vision. As Suno faces controversy and litigation from rightsholders arguing that AI companies need to license the music they use to train their software, Timbaland may be there to make a case that this doesn’t matter that much. (Neither Suno nor a representative for Timbaland would comment on the nature of Timbaland’s deal.) In other words, Timbaland is there to do for Suno what Limp Bizkit and Chuck D tried to do for Napster — position the company with users but against the majority of creators and rightsholders.
It seems like ancient history now, but within a month after Metallica sued Napster in April 2000, Limp Bizkit and Chuck D stood with the company against the band, Dr. Dre (who sued a few weeks later) and most of the music business. Limp Bizkit played a few weeks of Napster-sponsored free shows, and Bizkit frontman Fred Durst said the company offered fans a great way to sample albums before buying them. Around the same time, Chuck D wrote a New York Times op-ed supporting Napster and announced that he was working with the company on a contest. The company’s subsequent bankruptcy filing contained a reference to a payment to Chuck D for “the cost of speaking engagements and support,” according to Joseph Menn’s excellent All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning’s Napster.
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Then, and perhaps now, the idea was to position a startup backed by venture capitalists as being on the side of artists. Suno is “the best tool of the future,” Timbaland has said. “It allows you to get any idea in your imagination out of your head.” Suno has already positioned itself as a disruptor, arguing in its response to the major label lawsuit that “What the major record labels really don’t want is competition.” Maybe. But the lawsuit is over Suno’s alleged ingestion of copyrighted recordings in order to train its software.
This kind of maneuvering isn’t so unusual. For decades, Silicon Valley has introduced innovations with a predictable strategy: Ask forgiveness instead of permission, then take political issues directly to users. This strategy, as much as the technology involved, allowed Uber and Airbnb to grow so big that it can be hard to remember that they are basically high-tech ways to get around local taxi and hotel regulations. Uber and Airbnb are essentially in the business of regulatory arbitrage — they face less regulation than their legacy-company competitors, so they often come out ahead. And they were able to stay in business at least partly because they very quickly grew too big to fail. No politician wants to be known for making it harder to book a car or a hotel.
Suno and other generative AI platforms are less problematic, because they would compete more fairly with other tools to make music. The only question is whether the company should compensate rightsholders — including, presumably, Timbaland himself. The lawsuit against Suno will get complicated — one of these AI cases could end up going to the Supreme Court. But creators who want to be compensated for the use of their work aren’t against AI music tools any more than Metallica was against digital distribution — they want to get paid for the use of their work.
At least one creator will almost certainly make a lot of money from Suno: Timbaland. And although it might look bad for him to be on the other side of the issue from most musicians, this has been a reliable way to make money. One of the big winners of the Early Digital Music Age — the 1999 introduction of Napster to the 2011 U.S. launch of Spotify — was Alanis Morissette.
Yes, really.
When MP3.com sponsored one of her tours, in 1999, Morissette invested $217,355 into early-stage shares of the company, which — well, it was never entirely clear how it would actually make money, but that address was really hot at the time. She made more than a million dollars selling only some of the stock.
At the same time, it’s worth remembering how these moves look years later. From a 2024 perspective, it seems smart that Metallica and Dr. Dre sued Napster, because that company’s demise paved the way for licensed, commercial streaming services. Cracker frontman David Lowery and Taylor Swift can also say they were on the right side of history when it comes to creators’ rights. In retrospect, Limp Bizkit and Chuck D seem a bit naive. Years from now, Timbaland, as talented as he is, may seem the same.
Andrew Batey is best known to the music industry as the founder of streaming fraud prevention company Beatdapp. But for the last six years, Batey has been simultaneously building up a venture capital firm called Side Door Ventures. “I always wanted to just be viewed as a founder, but Beatdapp is probably my last company,” says Batey, a serial entrepreneur, who has also built companies in the restaurant and digital marketing industries. “I started thinking about where I want to transition to eventually, and I believe it’s investing.”
For the last 15 years, Batey says he’s mentored hundreds of companies at different accelerators, which is where he got the itch to start stepping into the investor role. After years of angel investing to check his aptitude, he realized, “I feel like I’m really good at picking the right companies.”
Side Door quietly launched in 2018 and comprises 14 different smaller funds covering a wide array of disciplines — space travel, blockchain, manufacturing and more. Investors are also interested in music and entertainment, too, though Batey says it needs to be something he believes he can grow “by 100x” and “there are not that many” entertainment startups that fit that bill. To date, he’s made investments in companies like SpaceX, Pipe, Plaid, Varda and EtherFi, as well as music-related startups like JKBX and the now-defunct superfans app Renaissance, which he felt particularly passionate about.
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In total, Batey says Side Door has averaged 61% gross internal rate of return across all funds since its launch and has over 100 companies in its portfolio.
Now that Beatdapp has established itself as an industry leader with partnerships with Universal Music Group, the Mechanical Licensing Collective, Beatport, SoundExchange and more, Batey is ready to talk about Side Door Ventures for the first time.
Why are you making your press debut, six years into Side Door Ventures?
To talk about it too early seemed like a giant, “Look at me! Look at me!” And that’s not really what a founder needs — a founder needs help. I’ve always just felt comfortable being the neck that moves the head, but I’ve lost my ability to be stealthily leading this, the more checks we’ve written.
In the beginning, a lot of startups just thought I was a founder. As soon as we had that founder-to-founder rapport, the person would just start sharing all these things that he wouldn’t have shared with an investor. But none of them were deal breakers. I found the transparency actually really great. There was a strength in meeting a founder at their level, without them knowing you’re the investor.
I named the fund Side Door Ventures because they never saw it coming when I would meet with the founder. They just thought I was mentoring them, and then I would suddenly be like, “I’d like to write a half million dollar check.”
It really favored us well because I wasn’t convincing them why they needed our money. I gave them advice and mentorship first, and then told them I wanted to write the check and that’s the exact thing they want. Many want someone that’s going to be helpful, and not someone just writing a check. In really tight funding rounds where people get pushed out, we often got into them early on when we should never have been.
But the cat’s out of the bag, and I’m ready to just own it.
What makes Side Door Ventures different from others in the field?
Fundamentally, the way we’ve been billed as a fund is entirely different than everyone else. We intentionally started with small funds that are $10 million to $30 million each. We have 14 funds overall.
When I started the fund, I had a big family that offered to give me $100 million to get started, and they wanted to know what my strategy would be. I always felt that big funds are really hard to return. So my strategy was, Why don’t we make a bunch of smaller funds of higher return multiples that traditionally perform better?
When I started talking to fund managers, though, they thought it was crazy. They’re like, “Institutions won’t bankroll that — a pension fund wants to have a check size of at least $10 million.” If you’re building a fund to please people covering their ass, you’re not building a fund for optimal returns. And if I was building a fund for optimizing returns, and if this was my money, I would go the opposite way and make a bunch of small funds. So my customer investor is totally different than most. My customers are high net worth individuals and families who care more about the returns, and less about whether I check a box.
For every small fund we have a slightly different iteration. We have one with the state of Michigan which is just focusing on manufacturing, advanced materials and mobility — things that the state of Michigan has talent resources for. We have a web3 fund which focuses on blockchain. We have a seed fund which is focused on seed investing. We have a European fund focused on European college students, specifically. I don’t know any other funds doing it like this.
Most Billboard readers know you as the founder of Beatdapp. Given that background, do you have interest in investing in companies that are complementary to what Beatdapp does?
Because of Beatdapp, I have views on where the industry could still use a lot of help, and I probably have some unique data insights about where there’s juice to squeeze. But I view Side Door and Beatdapp as entirely separate. We don’t have any of the same investors, so I don’t take money in one entity and then bring it to the other. It’s a fully firewall situation where we have different investors, different teams, different everything.
If there is anything that I’m too privy to because of my work outside of Side Door — let’s say that I have a relationship with founders of a company — I generally sit out of the investment committee and let the rest of the committee decide so that there’s no bias going into the decision making.
I love music and entertainment. It’s a big part of my background, so I obviously want to invest in things that are in that sector. But the majority of all music companies exit for under $15 million. The reality is that music is not the best venture-backable investment, which means that there are very few companies that meet the sort of the requirements to warrant a venture capital investment from us.
We have a bunch of funds, but they’re all basically investing in things we think could [provide] 100x [returns]. So if you’re a music startup valued at $20 million, how many companies have exited that are over $2 billion? The answer is probably only a handful — like Spotify.
That means one of two things. I either have to catch you way earlier, like in your first round, or you need to be such an outlier that I believe the market will move in your direction. For example, we invested in JKBX. Why? If you think about JKBX as a trading entity and the fact that it’s more of a fintech play than it is a music play, you could see a platform getting traction. Now, will they make it or not? Only time will tell. But they have the profile to potentially be worth billions of dollars if they can build that habit formation and become another asset type.
You have mentioned before that you learned a lot from investing in a superfan company, Renaissance, which ultimately went bust. Monetizing the superfan is such a hot topic in the music business right now. What did that experience teach you about the viability of superfan-related startups?
We see 7,000-8,000 deals a year, and I cannot think of another case where I saw a consumer-facing application that was as sticky with their fans as Renaissance. They had a million downloads — all organic, no marketing. They had 47% day-90 retention, meaning 47% of all users stuck with it after 90 days, which is insanely good. I think the average user launched the app 21 times per day — that’s like Instagram level.
The problem is that I don’t think they knew how to fully monetize it. Artists didn’t want to pay for it, labels didn’t want to pay for it. There wasn’t a big enough venture-backable business there. It was more of a $10 million to $15 million business, but how do you make that a $100 million business? They were struggling to figure out what could be scaled.
If this company who had the viral, organic growth and absolutely crushed it couldn’t figure out how to get those customers to pay, and couldn’t figure out how to get artists to pay, and couldn’t figure out how to get labels to pay, then how are any of these other fan apps going to make money?
The only way I think you can build a successful “superfan” business is by owning the merch pipeline itself — basically, you need to be the one that’s vertically integrated. You need to be integrating and selling the actual goods yourself so that you can build enough margins in there to support the business. If you were just a third party marketplace for all these other goods and services — like posters and tickets and merch — I don’t think there’s enough money there. I don’t believe that’s scalable.
This summer, the major labels filed a lawsuit against two AI music startups, Suno and Udio, and in early September, it was revealed that the use of AI music was instrumental in the scam alleged in the $10 million streaming fraud lawsuit. Do you see this affecting people’s confidence in AI music startups?
It could affect consumer confidence, but I do not think it will dissuade investors. The reality is, investors aren’t afraid of breaking things. Where a lot of people are mad because the status quo is changing, a lot of investors see that as a positive — as they say, “Volatility breeds profitability.”
However, what will succeed here is whoever comes up with a business model where everyone wins and it’s convenient for consumers, and they enjoy the experience. I haven’t seen one that wins yet. I haven’t seen a business model where consumers actually like it.
Look at the Drake–Weeknd guy [anonymous TikTok user Ghostwriter and his song “Heart On My Sleeve,” which used AI to deepfake Drake and the Weeknd]. His song was listened to millions of times, but it also had a pretty equal number of listeners. What that means is people were only listening to it one time or so and then leaving. It was a novelty. It wasn’t something that people saw longterm value in. Until there’s a product that people see longterm value, it’s not going to work.
When Michael “Mike” Smith was indicted Wednesday (Sept. 4) over allegations that he used an AI music company to create “hundreds of thousands” of songs and then used bots to artificially earn $10 million in streaming income since 2017, prosecutors claimed that some of the money flowed back to that AI music company. The indictment also claimed that Smith was in consistent contact with its CEO — but it never revealed their names.
ASCAP/BMI Songview records and the MLC database indicate that Alex Mitchell, CEO/founder of popular AI music company Boomy, is listed as the co-writer on at least hundreds of the 200,000 plus songs that are registered to Smith. Boomy also released a song, “This Isn’t Real Life,” jointly with Smith, CVBZ and Stunna 4 Vegas.
In a statement to Billboard, Mitchell says: “We were shocked by the details in the recently filed indictment of Michael Smith, which we are reviewing. Michael Smith consistently represented himself as legitimate.”
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The indictment alleges that around 2018, “Smith began working with the Chief Executive Officer of an [unnamed] AI music company and a music promoter to create thousands of songs that Smith could then fraudulently stream.” Within months, the CEO was allegedly providing Smith with “thousands of songs each week.”
In June 2019, the indictment says that Smith reported to the AI music CEO and the promoter that “we are at 88 million TOTAL STREAMS so far!!!” Smith explained to the CEO and promoter that his streams were earning about $110,000 per month and that the two men were each receiving 10% of the proceeds. Smith later asked the AI CEO to provide him with another 10,000 AI songs so that he could “spread this out more” with his streams. The indictment states that this was “to evade detection from streaming platforms.”
Eventually, according to the indictment, Smith entered a “Master Services Agreement” with this AI music company that supplied Smith with 1,000-10,000 songs per month. The deal stated that Smith would have “full ownership of the intellectual property rights in the songs.” In turn, Smith would provide the AI company with metadata and the “greater of $2,000 or 15% of the streaming revenue” he generated from the AI songs.
“Keep in mind what we’re doing musically here… this is not ‘music,’ it’s ‘instant music’ ;)” the AI CEO wrote to Smith in an email that was included in the indictment.
Mitchell’s publisher is listed as Songtrust, a publishing administration company owned by Downtown, which typically earns a percentage of signees’ royalties in exchange for services. Smith’s publisher, Smithhouse Music Publishing, also lists Songtrust as its point of contact on Songview.
A representative for Songtrust declined Billboard’s request for comment. However, a source close to the matter tells Billboard that Smith and Mitchell’s Songtrust deals were terminated more than a year ago.
While it is not unheard of for an AI company to be approached by customers who are looking to buy a large number of songs, multiple AI music executives tell Billboard that it is common to know why the customer wants the tracks and to do “KYC,” or “know your client,” checks to ensure they are above board.
Typically, customers for large sums of songs tend to be companies that are seeking cheap music alternatives, often for social media content. Other requests tend to come from unknown individuals outside of the U.S., especially streaming fraud hotspots like Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Vietnam and Brazil. These parties are often denied. Two sources say it’s surprising to see a CEO’s name listed in the credits as a songwriter when these transactions occur.
Boomy has been at the forefront of AI music since its infancy. Records vary as to when Boomy launched in beta, with some online sources saying 2018 and others saying 2019. It officially debuted in 2021, according to an announcement from Axios. The company claims on its website to have made over 20 million AI-generated tracks to date.
Boomy has also won the respect of the music industry establishment. For years, Boomy was distributing many of its AI tracks through a partnership with New York-based music services giant Downtown. Though this partnership was in place during the same time frame as Smith’s alleged fraudulent activities, it is unclear if any of Smith’s allegedly fraudulent AI tracks were distributed through Downtown. The indictment does state, however, that Smith used two distributors to upload content from 2017-2024, one based in New York and one based in Florida.
In May 2023, Boomy told users via Discord that Spotify had shut down its ability to upload songs to the DSP and that some of their released tracks had been removed. “This decision was made by Spotify and Boomy’s distributor in order to enable a review of potentially anomalous activity,” Boomy said at the time. Spotify later confirmed that the “anomalous activity” was related to possible streaming fraud detected on certain tracks. A Spotify spokesperson said at the time, “Artificial streaming is a longstanding, industry-wide issue that Spotify is working to stamp out across our service.”
In fall 2023, Boomy announced that it had partnered with fraud detection company Beatdapp to combat streaming manipulation. A month later, Boomy also announced that it had reached a new distribution partnership with ADA Worldwide, a company under the Warner Music Group (WMG) umbrella.
WMG is one of Boomy’s top investors, making both a pre-seed round as well as a seed round investment. Other Boomy investors include Sound Media Ventures, First Check Ventures, Intonation Ventures, Future Labs, Boost VC and Scrum Venture, according to Crunchbase.
According to Songview and the MLC database, the same tracks that list Smith and Mitchell as co-writers also list a music industry veteran named Bram Bessoff, founder of promotional platform Indiehitmaker. Typically, these tracks allocate 10% of publishing ownership and royalties to Bessoff, which matches the amount the indictment indicates was paid to the unnamed promoter. Bessoff’s publisher is listed as Songtrust as well. (A source close to the matter says Bessoff’s deal with Songtrust was also terminated more than a year ago).
Bessoff declined Billboard’s request for comment, citing his cooperation in the ongoing investigation.
AI music companies Suno and Udio have hired elite law firm Latham & Watkins to defend them against lawsuits filed by the three major labels in late June, according to court documents.
Filed by plaintiffs Sony Music, Warner Music Group (WMG) and Universal Music Group (UMG), the lawsuits claim that Suno and Udio have unlawfully copied the labels’ sound recordings to train their AI models to generate music that could “saturate the market with machine-generated content that will directly compete with, cheapen and ultimately drown out the genuine sound recordings on which [the services were] built.”
Latham & Watkins has already played a key role in defending top companies in the field of artificial intelligence. This includes the firm’s work to defend Anthropic against allegations of infringement levied by UMG, Concord Music Group and ABKCO last October. Latham represents OpenAI in all of its lawsuits filed by authors and other rights owners, including the case filed by the New York Times and a case filed by comedian Sarah Silverman and other writers.
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The Latham team is led by Andrew Gass, Steve Feldman, Sy Damle, Britt Lovejoy and Nate Taylor. Plaintiffs UMG, WMG and Sony Music are represented by Moez Kaba, Mariah Rivera, Alexander Perry and Robert Klieger of Hueston Hennigan as well as Daniel Cloherty of Cloherty & Steinberg.
It is common for AI companies to argue that training is protected by copyright’s fair use doctrine — an important rule that allows people to reuse protected works without breaking the law — and it is likely this will become a core part of Latham’s defense of Suno and Udio’s practices. Though fair use has historically allowed for things like news reporting and parody, AI firms say it applies equally to the “intermediate” use of millions of works to build a machine that spits out entirely new creations.
So far, both Suno and Udio have declined to comment on whether or not they have used unlicensed copyrights in their datasets. However, the music industry started to question what was in those datasets after a series of articles written by Ed Newton-Rex, founder of AI music safety nonprofit Fairly Trained, were published by Music Business Worldwide. In one of them, Newton-Rex said he was able to generate music from both Suno and Udio that “bears a striking resemblance to copyrighted music.”
The lawsuit cites circumstantial evidence to support the labels’ belief that their copyrighted material has been used by Suno and Udio in AI training. This includes generated songs by Suno and Udio that sound just like the voices of Bruce Springsteen, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Michael Jackson and ABBA; outputs that parrot the producer tags of Cash Money AP and Jason Derulo; and outputs that sound nearly identical to Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” The Beach Boys’ “I Get Around,” ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” The Temptations’ “My Girl,” Green Day’s “American Idiot” and more.
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